I just finished my second year serving as a TA for a High School Robotics camp for the
USC Summer Seminars.
It is a month-long course, but the first two weeks are really an introduction to engineering. We cover the different types of engineering (mechanical, electrical, civil, industrial, etc.), and gave them a crash course in each. During that time, we've toured companies such as Gulfstream, Boeing, and PaperMate, had the kids build popsicle stick bridges and do water-ballon drops, and taught them about proper engineering documentations. The last couple days of the second week were a brief introduction to
advanced lego design and mindstorms, and had them build simple devices such as a color recognizer or a robot that would drive in a fixed pattern. We finished with a simple game called the
Can-Do Challenge, which the kids all said later was very helpful introduction to robot programming and design.
The last two weeks are spent doing the main robotics challenge. Because of the cost and time commitment involved, we've decided not to do FIRST or FLL. Instead, we do
RoboCupJr, whose 1-on-1 version is easily accomplished by the High School kids in two weeks. We have four teams of four, and give each a standard
Mindstorms for Schools set, plus an additional
Gear Reduction Motor, a
MicroMotor, and a
High Speed Motor. We also bought a bunch of
RadioShack IR Phototransistors and connected them to Mindstorms wires (the phototransistors fit perfectly into the holes in lego pieces).
We give the teams a crash course in programming in RoboLab, but other than that, we leave the teams to figure stuff out on their own (of course the professor teaching the course and I are always there to help). The only caveat is that they had to document everything they try, no matter how flawed it is, in their lab notebooks.
For the playing field, we purchased four
IR glowing robot soccer balls and four
greyscale floor mats from
http://www.Acroname.com, and built the
wooden field border from from Home Depot parts.
With those supplies, the kids this past term were able to build four functioning, completely autonomous, soccer playing robots in only two weeks. Only two kids in the class had any previous robotics experience (one FIRST, one BBIQ), although a bunch took the class because they were planning to join their school's FIRST team.
If you want more info on the course, such as the syllabus, please email or PM me.