Successful Strategies for Robotics
A Workshop for Educators, Grades 7-12

When: 2 Thursdays, January 23 & 30, 4-6 PM
Where: The NASA Ames Educator Resource Center in Mountain View, CA
Cost: Free!
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Dear Educator,

You are invited to attend an introductory workshop on robotics using LEGOs, the RCX & Handyboard microcontroller, and a C programming environment. The workshop will be aimed at teachers who are interested in facilitating 7-12th grade students in the hands-on exploration of robotics. The introduction will be co-lead by Jeneva Westendorf, an English and robotics teacher at Foothill High School, San Jose, and Terry Grant, a Computer Scientist at NASA, Ames Research Center. Both have five years experience with coaching robotics teams in the Botball Competitions, and have lead robotics workshops over the past three years. http://www.botball.org

This short introduction will preview a more detailed Botball 2003 tutorial for those who participate, but will also be valuable as introduction for those wanting to start a student robotics club (or add robotics experiments to a classroom curriculum) based on LEGOs Mindstorms and the FIRST LEGO League kits. The material will be presented in a non-linear, non-traditional manner which we have found to be productive and to stimulate creative thinking in many students. We will include an overview of the methodology, an experience in building, coding and operating a simple LEGO robot, and discussion on the importance of 'coaching' students rather than 'teaching' robotics.
Resource materials will also be provided and reviewed, including the Interactive C programming environment, an introductory, self-guided tutorial for coding the RCX, physics experiments, and simple competitions.

We have decided to shift dates back one week from the initial announcement for the convenience of the management. It will be held at the NASA Ames Education Resources Center, Moffett Field, CA, Thursdays, January 23 & 30th, 4-6 PM.

The time is short, and only a limited number of seats are available for the workshop, so please register, or send us your queries on the workshop today! Call (650) 604-3574 to register and receive directions. For questions about workshop content, please email tgrant@mail.arc.nasa.gov

Last updated 01/08/03