A Global, Collaborative, Robotics Pilot Course

PARTICIPANTS

For the online collaboration, the instructors sought a global group of educators who were
experienced in using robotics as a teaching tool and were willing to participate in a pilot course that did not include college credit or any type of compensation. A call for participation was made on the Internet using educational listservs, bulletin boards, and educational robotics e-mailing lists. Within 36 hours, responses were received from more than 60 interested individuals. These expressions of interest came from 15 countries and included K-12 technology, math, and science teachers, university professors, and industry professionals involved in informal educational outreach programs. Invitations to participate were extended to 24 of the respondents. Twenty-two committed to participate in the study, representing 9 countries.

Tino Aleman
I live in Santa Maria, California, USA. I teach in a small rural elementary school. I teach third grade multiple subjects. I have been involved with Mindstorms and robotics for the last three years. I have take some distance learning classes. I signed on this pilot project to meet other teachers, learn new things to help my students and share some of my experiences in robotics.

David Barnes
I am a computer science lecturer at the University of Kent in England. I teach introductory Java, and that is the main language that I have used with the Mindstorms kits through the leJOS firmware. However, I have also used Robolab. In my teaching I use LEGO Mindstorms primarily as a motivational tool rather than as mainstream curriculum material. I have also used Robolab in several local schools with a couple of colleagues. This has typically been with children in grades 7-10. The purpose of that work has been to inspire both students and staff that computer science can be fun and interesting.

Wendy Carlson
I teach 6th - 8th grade computers in California (Sacramento area). For the last two years my students in the "Advanced" class have had the opportunity to participate in the First Lego League robotics challenge. They have never actually competed because they have yet to complete what they needed to do. I have not personally worked with the robotics set. We use the RIS 2.0 for programming the robots.

Gina Copas
I am a graduate student in the Human Factors Psychology program here at Wichita State University. My experience with robotics consists of observing my children participating in the Robotics Summer Camp this past summer. My collaboration with Tonya and Karen in this project is more from a methodological perspective; however, I eagerly anticipate learning much more about robotics by the end of this pilot program. Personally, I live in Andover, KS which is east of Wichita.

David Disko
I am a Technology Applications Teacher at Ojeda Junior High School outside of Austin Texas. Two years ago I rescued several Mindstorms kits after a teacher abandoned them in frustration. This year I am coaching three FLL teams and successfully integrated Mindstorms into our Math and Science subject areas. Robots in the Middle School have generated so much interest that we have more students doing robots after school than are in football. This year 40% of my FLL teams are female.

I hold an engineering degree from Texas Tech, teaching and psychology graduate work from the Univ. of Texas and have worked in education, engineering and sales. Robotics is one of my hobbies (walkers and vision sensing using Stamp and Brainstem) along with video production and travel.

Heather Egan
I am a primary school teacher living and working in Blackrock which is a suburb of Dublin, Ireland (Europe). Primary school caters for ages 4 to 12 or 13. Since September 2002 I have been teaching technology to the whole school and I have been looking for a creative way to use Lego robotics. I intend to do the project with the 12/13 year olds. Although I have never done any videoconferencing, I would like to do some and funding is not a problem.

Christine Gregory
I live in Decatur, Illinois and teach in Heyworth which is about 15 miles south of Bloomington. I have been using the robolab program with my Earth science students for four years. My students and I earned an internship to work on the Mars Exploration Rovers because of our robotics program. This year we are expanding to more competitive regional robotics. we will be competing in Sumo contests in our area.

Marvin Hall
Greetings from Kingston, Jamaica. In August 2003, I left full-time teaching and now offer private tutoring in Mathematics to middle and high school students. In January 2003, I will be offering Lego Robotics courses to high school students at Jamaican schools with the intention of exposing a sufficient number to launch a pilot of a National Robotics Competition and Exhibition in Sept - Dec 2004.

Brandi Hendrix
I am currently a Computer Studies teacher at Hadley Middle School here in Wichita Kansas.

I teach Lego Robotics in my classroom right now. We use the RIS and hope one day I will understand MLCAD enough to teach with. Currently, we are working on building a Mars Yard and will hopefully have it up and running in a couple of weeks. The kids are just wonderful and they teach me something new all the time.

Brenda Howsmon
I teach computer/technology/keyboarding to students grade 1-8 in St. Louis, MO. I have only been teaching a few years, but I love it! I have a wonderful computer lab and a technology committee that helps me out in a pinch. I am also going for my master's in Computer Education and have taken several online courses.

Bonnie Middeldorf
I live in the United States, Michigan to be exact. I teach middle school students 6th - 8th grade. I have a programming class for 7th and 8th graders where we use the rcx's and robolab program.

Steve Putz
I live in Santa Clara, California. I'm not trained as a teacher (I worked in software research for many years), but now I teach LEGO robotics in after-school and weekend classes, and I run a LEGO Robotics summer day camp. I have coached FIRST LEGO League since 1999 and I am director of the Northern California FLL State Tournament.

Eric Reed
I'm a robotics / computer science instructor at De Anza High School in Richmond, CA (USA). I've been using Mindstorms in my classes for four years, and I am currently involved in FIRST Lego League for the fourth year running.

Saeed Saeed
First of all, let me explain what my name means. Saeed in Arabic = Happy in English; and both of names, first and last that is, are the same: So, I am Happy Happy. I live in Saudi Arabia where our weekends are Thursdays and Fridays, and its day time over here when it is night in the States... This should keep this project very interesting...

I got my M.Eng degree from Cornell University and participated in the Robocup event of year 2000 that occurred in Australia. We got the championship then.

Soh Chio Siong
Where I come from, we put our surname first, coz it's more important :-) So SOH is the surname and Chio Siong is my given name. C S Soh will do for short.

I'm from Singapore, that's about 1 deg North latitude and 104 deg East longitude. We are a city, state and country all rolled into one.

I'm a public health physician by training but a LEGO robotics engineer by circumstance (& necessity). I teach creative learning with LEGO to kids in primary (elementary) grades 4-6 (ages 10-12). I also coach them for our National Junior Robotics Competition and the FLL Singapore.

Sherri Sorrells
I live in Wichita, Kansas. Currently, I teach computer studies to 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students at Curtis Middle School here in Wichita. I also teach computer keyboarding and computer presentation online using Blackboard to high school students in our Wichita eSchool program, a program that allows home school students another avenue.

Larry Whitman
I am an Assistant Professor in Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas. I have presented a lego factory to over 1000 people (some at professional conferences, many to middle and high school students). This has nothing to do with Mindstorms though! Tonya and Karen got me hooked on Mindstorms and I helped out in the Summer Robotics Camp last summer that many others have already described. I am also helping with the Mindstorms Challenge this next Feb. I am teaching a Introduction to Engineering class to freshmen who are interested in engineering. I am currently using Mindstorms for their semester design project using Robolab.