Pandemic Robots
“Back in the Day” when I first started my teaching career at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy, I worked very closely with the robotics team. With a background in physics and having been newly hired to teach some engineering courses, it was expected that I’d learn the ropes and eventually become the co-coach of the team. The lead coach and robotics instructor at the school, Tony Bertucci, is a legit LEGEND in the world of robotics and education. I count myself extremely lucky that I began my career with him, because his friendship and his mentoring shaped me profoundly as an educator and as a person. This man is the living embodiment of the word “Integrity”, and the world is a better place because of all the students he’s touched throughout his life.
As much as I tried to be enthusiastic about the robotics team, my involvement with it waned and after about 3 years I made it clear to my administration that I didn’t plan on someday taking over the job from Tony. The LASA robotics team is a HUGE deal. It’s basically an institution in the world of FIRST Robotics, and the program Tony developed is a first-class example of a robust school club that has a life of its own beyond any cohort of students or mentors that come and go. I was overwhelmed by the time and energy that everybody put into the team, and I found myself pulled towards other interests* both in and outside of the school day.
I never fully lost touch with the robotics team, what with having a classroom in the same below-ground area as the woodshop and metalshop and the robotics room (collectively and affectionately called “The Dungeon” at LASA). Tony and I still taught engineering classes together, and I still helped out when the team needed chaperones for trips or just an extra hand in the shop. So when I found myself having a phone call with Tony this past summer, I was delighted to learn that I could still lend a hand with the team as a remote mentor. Everybody else is online now due to the pandemic and school closures, so why should geography limit my involvement?
With all the freelance work I was doing for LEGO Education concerning the SPIKE Prime educational robotics kit, I talked Tony into buying 6 of them for the team. After that… I needed to come up with a way for the team to, ya know, actually use them somehow. I got inspired by the work of some of my colleagues at Tufts University have been doing in the field of remote robotics education, so I figured we’d try to create a remote, online version of the team’s very successful SMART Camps.
This past weekend, we held our first virtual workshop for kids in grades 3-5 to give them a chance to play with a robot ThRoUgH tHe InTeRwEbZ. The concept was stupidly simple, but it worked. Basically, we used the power of Zoom’s “remote control” feature to give students access to our own computers, which had the robotics app up and running on it. We grouped students into teams of 2 or 3 with an instructor (the high school team members and me) who had a robot built at home, along with a maze or obstacle course on the floor. We logged into the calls both on our computers and on our smartphones that were positioned to provide a “bird’s-eye-view” of the robot in the maze. Students took turns remotely controlling our computers and learning how to develop code to command the robot to navigate the maze and even pick up colored blocks with the gripping arm and color sensor. It was pretty low-tech and the kids had to wait to take turns controlling the robot, but overall it ended up being a really fun experience. We’re going to try doing a few more workshops like this over the rest of the spring semester, and we’re looking forward to providing more opportunities for kids to play with robots while they’re stuck at home in a pandemic.
By the way, my friends at Tufts are developing a way cooler version of this that will hopefully be ready soon. In their project, called CORP, kids don’t have to wait to take turns because the system they’ve developed allows for multiple real-time control and collaboration. It’s gonna be awesome, and I can’t wait to see the final form. Check out this blog post I just wrote about their project here!
*In school, I was busy developing my astronomy curriculum and started my own class after my first two years at LASA. Outside of school, I was playing rugby with the Austin Valkyries and it took up most of my Saturdays, which were the principal “build days” for the robotics team.