Teacher Training in Pasco with the Puget Sound Center

Last week I was in Pasco, WA training 7 people on our Lego Robots curriculum for the Puget Sound Center for Teaching Learning and Technology. Their TechREACH program increases middle school students' interest in STEM. They put on two-week summer camps every year, with past themes including creating video games and computer animation. During the two-day training, we covered the technical aspects of robots (constuction, sensors, programming) but also lessons we've learned in teaching robots (trouble-shooting, peer learning, etc). The teachers all had a great time and built some really cool robots. One of the groups had a very impressive slow-driving robot, while another built a very consistent and effective basketbot. The teachers were so excited about building their robots that they didn't even want to break for lunch. During the next several weeks, these teachers will teach 6 camps in Washington state.

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TAF Robot Olympics Final Event

On this beautiful Saturday morning, approximately 100 people gathered in the gym of the Southwest Boys and Girls Club near White Center to watch the championships of the Robot Olympics. TAF has been using TL's curricula in its after-school programs for a year in 6 different schools in the Seattle Area: White Center Heights, Mount View, Beverly Park, Hill Top, Southern Heights, and Seattle. Each of these schools had teams for 4 exciting events: basketbot, tug-of-war, drag racing, and archery. It was a pretty intense day of coopertition (cooperation + competition) with a different school winning each event. First up was the tug-of-war, where the winning strategy was to build a robot that was "heavy and had gears" in the words of the winning team. Their robot featured a low-geared three motor robot that bested each of its opponents fairly easily. Next up was basketbot, where the robots had to shoot a ping-pong ball into a box. There was a 1 point line and farther away was a 3-point line. Every group was able to score some baskets, but the winning team shot an incredible 100% from the floor, rapid-fire shooting one-point shot after one-point shot, a total of more than 20 in only 60 seconds. The sleeper event of the day was the archery contest. We weren't expecting this event to be the most exciting, but it really drew the crowd in. This event featured a bulls-eye target laid on the ground. In preparing for the event, each team had to calibrate their robot by calculating how far it would go. They did this by either measuring speed and then programming their robot to drive for a particular time, or by measuring the circumference of the wheels and programming the robot to drive a given number of rotations. The exact distance between the start line and the center of the bulls-eye was kept secret until just before the competition. Once it was announced, each team huddled around the laptop and did the calculations to program their robot to drive as close to the target as they could get. It was pretty amazing to see young people furiously doing math on a Saturday morning. Although every team was pretty successful, the winning team nailed the bulls-eye on both attempts. The final event, the drag race was of course also exciting, with the winning team offering up a well-geared car that blew everyone away. In the end, all the students did a great job, and Hill Top took home top honors.
All in all, it was a great event, with lots of support from parents, and the students showed off their impressive math and robotics skills.