Background:
This summer the research laboratory where I work is hosting a one week summer camp for a group of junior high school age students. For one week different researchers spend all or part of a day with the group of students exposing them to different aspects of science and technology. The purpose of the camp is to expose the students to science and technology that they might not otherwise be exposed to and show them that it can be fun in the hopes of inspiring them. These students are not the "overachievers" but more the ones that could be with a little encouragement. The camp will cover everything from field biology, laboratory chemistry, GIS/GPS/mapping, soils testing, to structures engineering. I have been asked to spend half a day on robotics. With only half a day I am trying to decide how best to spend the time. I am currently leaning toward purchasing some
Parallax BOE-Bot kits which should only take about 1 hour to assemble and then spend the remaining time using the assembled kits to demonstrate some simple robotics concepts. I believe the group will be about 25 students. We have a small budget (~$1000) to get some robotics supplies. I was thinking about breaking up the students into 5 teams of ~5 students each (Alpha/orange, Bravo/green, Charlie/blue, Delta/yellow, Echo/red) (you can see where this is going) and then having some sort of mini-competition. Something on the scale of the Lego League table top size. Maybe a line following “maze” or something. In the end we give each student their own HexBug to keep that matches their team name/color.
My questions:
Does anyone have any experience with the BOE-Bots? I personally do not but think they look perfect for what we want to do. Can anyone provide feedback on what they can do and how suitable they would be for a half day exposure to robotics for a group of junior high school level students? I am looking for something inexpensive and fun, fairly simple to put together but that still provides the opportunity to learn a little about robotics and maybe simple programming concepts. Does anyone have any ideas on what sort of small competition we could have with the BOE-Bot? I am sure that many here on Chief Delphi have done similar robotics camps before. Any advice on what to do and not do would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Chuck