A Great Day of Teaching With The S2
Wanted to share about a great teaching experience I had last Thursday, March 6, 2014. I had the privilege of teaching at Oblong Childrens Christian Homes school, New Life Academy http://www.oblongchristianhome.org/ . With a gift of two S2 from Parallax (Thanks Ken!) that I left with the school and my S2 I was able to teach the children about microcontrollers, programing, and robotics. The children enjoyed the whole day, but were very excited when I turned them loose to program the S2 to complete the final challenge using what they had learned. They all did great! Each of the children had only slight flaws in their first attempts. Im excited to be planning to return in May for a second class were we will begin to use the sensors and conditional tiles. Its always good to be reminded why we all love this hobby so much!
Thanks to Parallax for the gift of S2s. Thanks to Nancy (teacher) for letting me come. Thanks to Rich (House Parent/teacher) for assisting me and taking the pictures.
I also want to encourage others to make the effort to look for opportunities to teach others about robotics. The S2 is an awesome platform to begin with. I installed the programing software on five ancient XP laptops without one glitch. The software is easy to use and learn. The robot is quite a powerful package because when the students have pushed the limits of the simple programing interface they can move to Spin or other available languages for the Propeller chip. And if you dont believe me just ask Whit who has a lot of great stories to share about his use of the S1 and S2 teaching children about robotics.
Thanks,
Tony
P.S. Oblong is about 5 miles from Burl Ives' home town of Hunt City. He is buried East of there in Mound Cemetery
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Thanks to Parallax for the gift of S2s. Thanks to Nancy (teacher) for letting me come. Thanks to Rich (House Parent/teacher) for assisting me and taking the pictures.
I also want to encourage others to make the effort to look for opportunities to teach others about robotics. The S2 is an awesome platform to begin with. I installed the programing software on five ancient XP laptops without one glitch. The software is easy to use and learn. The robot is quite a powerful package because when the students have pushed the limits of the simple programing interface they can move to Spin or other available languages for the Propeller chip. And if you dont believe me just ask Whit who has a lot of great stories to share about his use of the S1 and S2 teaching children about robotics.
Thanks,
Tony
P.S. Oblong is about 5 miles from Burl Ives' home town of Hunt City. He is buried East of there in Mound Cemetery
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Comments
Lev - To answer your question I will but together a document outlining what I did. I believe that will provide more information and be of more use than trying to type it in a forum reply window. Give me a day or so and I'll post it here for you and others who would like to introduce children or adults to robotics.
Tony
Ditto that! I thought I'd be terrified, but teaching a once-a-week class in robotics (AcitvityBot C) at the local high school is one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever pursued. The kids energize me! No matter what stresses or anxieties I might be enduring going into each one-hour session, I come out feeling refreshed and utterly useful in a way that actually counts for something. If I had discovered teaching before engineering, my life would probably have evolved quite differently.
-Phil
-MattG