"Familiar Looking" Table-Top Robotics Project

[Sean Schuff]

For those of you who would like to get a flavor for engineering while in high school, encourage your school to look into the Project Lead the Way curriculum. It is by far the best engineering curriculum out there for secondary education, and I’ve looked at a lot of them for our district’s engineering charter school. (Just ask JVN – student of Paul Kane, one of the originators of the PLTW curriculum) It is not the cheapest program around but it is the best value for the price, hands down.

The curriculum approaches engineering from a design/creativity/problem solving/teamwork perspective which is a far cry from your typical CAD class. We can teach anyone to use a piece of CAD software or to program a robot. Those are really just tools used to solve problems. The focus should be on giving students the opportunity to solve open-ended problems with creative solutions. It sounds like Vince and the Coast Guard Academy are doing just that! Kudos!

Check out my signature line below – Woody nailed it! Focus on coming up with unique solutions to complex problems and expand your mind. Sometimes you’ve got to teach yourself or search out the means to learn what you want to learn the way you want to learn it. And while you’re at it, think outside the box.

Sanddrag – I hope you get to experience some of this soon. It makes the rest of your education all that much more relevant.

*climbs down off of teacher soapbox*

Good Luck!

Sean

[Rich Kressly]

Vince,
Congratulations on the publication of a very important article. Your work has broken a lot of ground and is paving the path to a more interactive/ problem solving classroom at both the secondary and post-secondary levels.

[Cyberguy34000]

Our team is made up of several high schools in the district, it creates some very interesting situations considering that there's quite a bit of rivalry going on. Though robotics is one of the few places where we lay those aside. Anyways, our lead mentor actually is in charge of a "Project: Lead the Way" curriculum at our rival school. Kind of cool, but why he's teaching it over there instead of a more worthy school (E.G. Mine) still confuses me