Robotics for High School Students

Jawa

I will be introducing·robotics to·high school students.·I plan to work with the students once a week (for about 3 hours a day).··I have decided to use the·bot kit·but I am not sure following the text (that comes along with the kit) is the best pedagogical approach.
If you have worked with·high students, can you please share your experience? I am·interested·in weekly curriculum plan that can help me to structure the course.·How many weeks is optimal?
I will greatly appreciate if you have any suggestions in this regard.

Thanks

Jawa

Russ Ferguson

The book that comes with the BOE-BOT ("Robotics with the BOE-BOT") contains very important basic information that must be understood before the BOE-BOT can be used for much of anything else.

If a student has not worked with electrical circuits or written programs then it would be very good to go through the "What's a Microcontroller?" first. The Board of Education which comes with the BOE-BOT can be used with the "What's a Microcontroller?" and you will only need a couple of additional components. Parallax does sell the book and components (without the processor board) in a class kit.

Each chapter in the book briefly introduces a concept which must then be applied by doing each of the activities that follow. Completion of the chapter activities is essential to mastery of the concept. The activities can be time consuming if a student has difficulties with breadboarding the circuits, but trouble shooting a circuit is one of the skills to be learned in robotics. Students are often inclined to skip the activities presuming that there is nothing to be gained by doing something that is so clearly explained in the book.

Your educational goals will be a big factor in determining how long it will take the students to go through the book. It will probably take 9 to 12 weeks to get through one book if you are meeting one day a week and taking some of the class time to present and review concepts.

Andy Lindsay (Parallax)

Jawa,

Hi, my name is Andy Lindsay, and I wrote the book to which you are referring - Robotics with the Boe-Bot. My main interest in replying to this post is to point out some of the features that were designed into the book, for teachers as well as for students. Instructors usually find out about these features when they attend Parallax BASIC Stamp Educators Courses. Since not all instructors get to attend before taking it for a spin in their classroom, this seems like a good place to try to repeat some of that material.

Although I am not myself a high school teacher, I worked with many high school teachers before the first writing of this book as well as though its two major revisions and four minor revisions. Likewise with the internal Parallax review committee, because we all have taught many BASIC Stamp Educators Courses. Collectively, we have had opportunities to interact with middle school, high school, college and university instructors while teaching courses all over the continental US, as well as in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, and South America. In addition, some of the instructors at schools near Parallax have also invited me to visit their classes to help me get a better feel for how it fits. Robotics with the Boe-Bot is designed to accommodate several different levels of coursework, and I have gone through a similar process with community colleges and universities. While community college and university instructors tend to pick and choose the parts of the text that fit into a particular course, high school students tend to go through the book from cover to cover.

I have met teachers who make every effort to ensure that students clearly understand every circuit, programming, and pre-engineering lesson embedded in the book. I have also met instructors who never took the time to learn any of the material in the book in favor of an approach where they hand out the books and the kits to the students with these instructions: "here kids, try this out, and when you're ready, then we'll have a contest to see who can build the coolest robot." The Robotics with the Boe-Bot text has performed well in both of those extremes as well as the range between. For the students, Robotics with the Boe-Bot is designed to impart lots of important lessons and skills to the studious reader. However, it also has support to help even the students who don't necessarily pay close attention still achieve successes and help keep them motivated.

Here are some of the features that make the wide range of uses possible:

- The book is separated into 42 discrete activities. Each activity focuses on either a new circuit, a new pre-engineering lesson, or at most two new programming concepts. So, even though the book might seem kind of thick, it’s separated into chunks that are manageable, both for teachers and students.
- Activities start with an introduction that explains what will be happening in the activity, how it works, and in many cases, how the concepts are used in real-world product designs.
- After the introduction, a parts list may be included if the activity has the student build something. The parts list is followed by a circuit schematic along with a wiring diagram. The wiring diagram is just one solution, which can be readily used by students, even without prior circuit experience. For teachers who wish to exercise their student’s circuit building skills can task them with wiring the circuit differently.
- Most importantly, all activities use checkmarks to indicate instructions/procedures that the students must follow to get the Boe-Bot to work as advertised.
- For activities that introduce new programming concepts, they are discussed next, along with highlighted examples that will appear in the next example program they enter and run.
- Then comes an example program the students can try along with checkmark-instructions, again, to help ensure that the students can get the program to make the Boe-Bot work as advertised.
- At the end of each activity is a Your Turn section that suggests ways to modify their circuit/program/robot’s behavior to make something different happen, and in doing so, help the student firm up his/her understanding of what was learned in the activity.

- The book is separated into eight chapters, each with a cluster of between three and eight related activities.
- Each chapter has an introduction the explains how the activities in the chapter fit into the larger picture of robotics.
- Each chapter ends with a Summary, followed by Questions, Exercises, Projects, and Solutions. Additional Questions, Exercises, Projects, and Solutions are available from Parallax, and I will contact you via this forum’s Private message function to get you plugged into those resources.

Assuming no prior experience with programming, circuits or robotics,·a teacher·can typically guide a group through a very thorough coverage of every activity in the text in 24 to 30-hours of class time. This includes imparting understanding of every concept in every activity, along with having them build and test each circuit, and enter and run each program, and make the Boe-Bot do everything in the book. After that, the students should be able to answer the questions and exercises, and are ready to start working on projects and contests. To get this level of detail, you’ll have to stay a few activities ahead of the students at all times as well as make careful study of them. I have a power point with close-ups of key figures and code snippets from the text that you might also find helpful for the lecture portions of the class.

Many teachers have their students give the text much more topical coverage in favor or trying other robots like the SumoBot and Toddler, and I’ve had reports of going through the material in 10 class hours, and sometimes even less than that. I do see some problems when the coverage is too topical though. True, the students followed the checkmark-instructions in the book and copied and pasted the programs from the PDF version of the book into the BASIC Stamp Editor and had a good time. However, they missed a lot of learning and skill building by not hand entering the example programs, skipping reading about how each new programming concept works, and skipping the Questions, and Exercises. Without actually paying some attention to each new concept and trying it out as it is introduced, students don’t build up the essential skills they’ll need. Then, they tend to get stuck when it’s time to strike out on their own and do the projects at the end of the chapter or have a contest. In other cases, the class has already completed What’s a Microcontroller before moving on to Robotics with the Boe-Bot. When they are approaching it with What’s a Microcontroller as a foundation, a more topical coverage isn’t a problem at all.

Well, I hope this helped shed some light on the Robotics with the Boe-Bot its uses, and what went into its development. Once we get you plugged in to the Parallax resources, you will have additional means of collaborating with other instructors and sharing resources.

Regards,

Andy Lindsay
Applications Engineer - Stamps in Class

Post Edited (Andy Lindsay (Parallax)) : 11/11/2005 12:37:24 AM GMT

ez101

There is a problem in using the book that comes with the kit. Teaching at a middle school in the LAUSD District is they have MAC's and the interface is different from the book. so they can do the work and/or copy and paste but controls are somewhat different and need to be explored without any references to look at. we also have had to do some work to get downloaded software "debuged". problem with the serial/USB port recognition.

NWCCTV

This thread is almost ten years old. Pretty sure things have changed by now!!!!

Genetix

ez101,

Welcome to the forum.
Parallax has a great education department and there is even an Educator forum that the rest of us don't have access to.
You should give them a call regarding your issues.

I know there are people on here who use Macs but it's best that you start a new post and title it something such as Teaching Robotics with the Boe-Bot on a Macintosh.

John Kauffman

In case other educators are hitting this thread on searches (started 2006):

I have been teaching with the BoeBot for 12 years (as of 2015). My students have purchased ~200 Parallax kits and built with my guidance. In most of my schools students each buy their own kit. Not to brag, but I think I have seen and solved every conceivable problem. I have a site with some helpful hints and videos: www.BoeBotTeacher.com. I have also held train-the-trainer seminars to share my experiences.

I'm glad to personally backstop any teacher new to the platform. We can start a thread on the educators forum and communicate through your first year. IM me when you start so I can respond straight away.

I think the most difficult times in the first year are when you are troubleshooting all the students' activities. Most of my class times is spent circulating and solving problems. That can be intimidating your first year. But there are several ways to succeed.

First is to be humble - let students know you are new to the platform and encourage them to work together. Call for help from the better students. On an unsolved problem tell them you will check with experts and have an answer next class.

Second, get some extra kits and build known working models. Then students can try their code on your model and quickly isolate if it is a soft- or hardware problem. On software side test the known working code downloadable from Parallax. Sometimes I have them copy their code and copy known good code to Word. Print the pages then line up the sheets side-by-side to see where code differs.

Third, get a notebook and keep a record of problems and solutions. I use shorthand with one line to describe symptom and one line to record my solution. I like to require students to do the same.

Last, these fora ensure your success. If you post a code problem and photo of the circuit to one of these fora I can guarantee you will have the problem solved by your next class.

For educators finding this thread since 2012: If you use Macs you can use the newer ActivityBot with native programming options for Mac, Win or Linux. The ActivityBot also has some built-in advancements like the rotary encoders.

Again, I am enthusiastic about and sympathetic to educators new to the Parallax platforms. Call on me.

- John

Ken Gracey

This is a tremendous offer by John Kauffman and I encourage any educator to feel free to network with him.

John's experience goes well beyond Parallax hardware (Arduinos, for one example) and this is a benefit to anybody who's confused by the myriad of educational solutions available these days. He's also provided very detailed review of our "What's a Multicore Microcontroller" tutorial, so he knows what's coming for this audience. And finally, he's taught all kinds of students: young ones, vocational-tech, adult programs, etc.

Ken Gracey