Subject:
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Finished Our First Year of Robotics Club
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.edu
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Date:
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Mon, 14 May 2001 02:41:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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6809 times
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Well, my first year as sponsor of an elementary school robotics club is
coming to a close. We just have the pizza party left and then weeks and
weeks of re-sorting each Mindstorm kit ;)
I learned a lot this year through trial and error. I started the year with
20 5th and 6th graders and we met twice a week, all year long. During the
course of the year, 4 students "dropped out" for various reasons, leaving us
with 16. There are 9 kits (and 1 more for me) between us. One of the
problems I encountered was meeting individual student needs throughout the
year. Because each student was on a different level, this was hard to do
sometimes -- but I made it ok. The biggest hurdle was convincing some of the
students to become "Movers" instead of "Stoppers" (Stoppers, stop and ask
the teacher whenever they encounter a problem instead of trying to work it
out for themselves). We began the year with a LOT of stoppers and,
unfortunately, we also ended the year with quite a few ;)
I think for next year I might change it to each have 9-10 students for the
year OR to have two groups of 9-10 students and each group will participate
for 1/2 the year and then we'd switch. Which do y'all think is the better
way to go?
Also, I'm thinking about requesting additional funds to buy 5-10 Vision
Command robots for next year as well, but I'm not sure. I have a VC kit
myself and am really impressed with what It can do.
Overall though, the community really embraced the idea and we even got some
local media coverage throughout the year. One of the papers wrote a good
article on us here:
http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_div=3&u_hdg=0&u_sid=63587
Our district liked it so much that this summer, for our 3 week summer school
in June, There are going to be 5-6 teachers teaching Robolab I and II --
they purchased enough kits to work with a total of 150-200 kids!
No regrets and I'd like to see posts (or eMails) for other of you that
sponsor your own Robotics Clubs. Many people complain that this BBoard
doesn't get many posts -- maybe we can start changing that!
Oh - And if you're reading this and haven't taken a peek at Ben Erwin's new
Mindstorms book yet, you really should - It's a peach!
Mr. Sims - Omaha, NE
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