Robotics in Private Schools

[annie1939]

I am looking for info about robotics/engineering programs in private schools. We lost the class we had last year, and now we have to find examples of other private schools that are offering engineering courses to get the class started up again. The headmaster is looking for a school that he can visit to see the implementation. I haven't come up with a lot from a web search so if anyone knows of private independent schools that offer up this sort of program, let me know.

Thanks,

Ann

[Mikell Taylor]

My high school, Columbus School for Girls in Columbus, Ohio, has FIRST throughout all three levels (JFLL, FLL, and FRC). LEGO robots are integrated into the lower school curriculum. FLL and FRC are just extracurriculars in high school, not integrated into the coursework, but they do have a teacher teaching an upper school engineering course now. I don't know if that's what you're looking for, but I'd be happy to put you in contact with the teacher if you'd like.

[waialua359]

you can try and contact team 2090, Punahou Schools. They are a fairly large private school and highly recognized in Hawaii.

High School that Barack Obama attended......

[ttldomination]

I would prefer that your school try to implement robotics as an extra-curricular activity. Kids that actually want to do it will join, and kids are more likely to have more fun if it's a club or something.

[Jonathan Norris]

There are many teams in Canada that are run at private schools: 610, 771, 296, 1547, 2166, and a couple more that have had teams in the past.

The high school I graduated from, Crescent School team 610, robotics was seen as one of the core parts of the school, along side sports, academics, community service ect. With their long history in FIRST the robotics program became very well known within the school and became one of the pillars of student leadership. As I know with many of the other Canadian private school FIRST teams, the robotics team was always used as a publicity tool when attracting new students.

As for courses there were two course offerings, in grade 11 and 12, that was primarily a robotics based curriculum. The curriculum in the last couple years used modified VEX games.

So yes there are many good examples of FIRST thriving at smaller private schools. With only 300 high school students at Crescent School we would regularly get 50 students signing up for the robotics program.

[klrswift]

910 comes from a Catholic school in the metro Detroit area. The team is a completely voluntary after school activity, but we have a class that is designed to get students interested in the program that we have during the first semester. It is taught by our lead mentor and mimics teaches the students the fundamentals of what they need to know to help design, build and program the robot in the winter. We have 22 students who are there because they are interested in engineering, and didn't take it because they thought it was a "blow off"(we offered a drop because we originally had the class capped at 15!). Last year, three senior members of the team acted as teaching assistants and contributed to the mentoring process that FIRST is all about. It is important to offer some kind of structured learning, but we found that it was a bad idea to require involvement in one as a prerequisite for the other.

Good luck getting your class going again.

[annie1939]

We are a four year extracurricular team. What we are looking for now is to expand the program back into the curriculum. Is anyone implementing anything like the Infinity Project or Project Lead the Way at their private school. What I am really looking for is elective classes that will round out the science classes we have. I could come up with a class directly related to the robotics team, but I was wondering if there was some program out there that was being implemented by private schools that was broader in scope.

Ann

[FoleyEngineer]

To expound on what Kevin wrote a bit, Team 910 has offered a robotics class for three years now and it has grown and adapted as we learned what worked and what didn't in the classroom. It's a one semester long elective called Robotics Engineering and is offered to all four grades (9-12). We try to limit the classroom size to 15 but this year increased it to 22 due to demand, and added an extra assistant teacher and TA to help with the load.

We start off with a safety training course and check out each student on every machine. We then have a section on materials and tools where they learn the names and uses of over 100 tools. Next, they design their "class-bot" as a team given some basic constraints. They choose the layout of the components, placement of the wheels and drivetrain, battery, and we discuss C/G, friction, maneuverability, etc. This year it's built on a 20x24" base and consists of two motors, speed controllers, a drivetrain, batteries, IFI CPU, radio, etc. We then broke the class into two teams (red and blue!) and broke each team into four sub-teams who were responsible for the building of the frame, motor mounts, etc. During this section, they spend 1 to 1 1/2 days a week in "lecture" learning things like gear ratios, physics principles like C/G, coefficient of friction, drivetrain angular velocity calculations, etc. and the remaining time in the labs (which are attached to the dedicated classroom). Next, they assemble their individual components and then move on to electrical.

In electrical, they learn about electricity, the basic V=IR formula and circuit theory, wire gage standards, and how things like motors, speed controllers, radios, switches, gyros, and accelerometers work. They learn to strip, crimp, and solder and are graded on the quality of their work. They then wire up their robots, hook up the radios and start to drive them. This is always an exciting time when they first get to see the fruits of their labor in motion.

The next step is programming. We teach them flowcharting and the basics of logic, variables, loops and program flow. Then they write a few basic, "Hello World" programs in one of our computer labs and get familiar with the "code, compile, execute, test" cycle. They then are taught to use some pre-written functions that read from the joysticks and control the motors and they write some basic "autonomous" code that will drive their robots on a pre-determined route of their choosing.

Once they have the mechanical, electrical and programming portions covered (and have been tested on each as we move along), we go into the "really fun" part of the class. This is where they customize their team's robot to accomplish a goal - such as pushing ping-pong balls into one of 5 goals of varying sizes (and score values) in a timed period. They then modify their bot to add components to it to help it accomplish this task. It might be as simple as a wedge shaped scoop on the front that corrals the balls so that they can drive them over to a goal, or it could be a servo driven arm that feeds them in - whatever they want, but they only have a couple weeks to design and build it so it has to be pretty simple.

The final week is spent competing with their new "classbots" red vs. blue giving each team member a chance to drive it and keeping a cumulative score. The winning team gets a prize but they're all winners for what they learn.

I know it sounds like a lot, and it IS. We move at a fast pace and try to keep everyone working in parallel to get it done. The addition of TA's who are senior members of the team is a big help. It gives the TAs a real feather in their caps for their college resumes and teaches them to lead small groups who look up to them. It also gives the students more one-on-one personal attention and they see a role model of how they should behave and what they can look forward to in the future.

Hope this helps a bit. Good luck in whatever you do!
John

[Pat Roche]

Another fantastic example is the Saint Paul's School in Concord, NH. They are team 1512. Their advisor Terry Wardrop would be the best person to talk to. He is very knowledgeable about the private school system along with courses related to FIRST.

Best of Luck,

Pat

[DonRotolo]

1626 Falcon Robotics is also in a private school. Unfortunately for visiting purposes, they are in New Jersey.