Every year this class has been characterized by its vision to provide meaningful, innovative, and creative technological learning opportunities to prepare students for a future of infinite possibilities. This hands-on enrichment camp will teach girls and boys maker skills and basic programming using Arduino programmable circuit boards or “microcontrollers”, Parrot minidrones that fly, run, and jump, as well as LEGO Mindstorms robots that compete in a sumo wrestling arena.
All that is called for are in these kits, a few everyday items, and students' own, unique ideas. Because great interactive projects need more than just wires and components, they need smart makers. Students will participate and create something beautiful and make someone smile with what they invent. Fun is guaranteed in this summer!
Why students need to learn about this?
Everyone, every day, uses technology. We live in a world surrounded by it, from banking, medicine, entertainment to retail. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, and any profession in the future will be full of computational thinking. Most people leave the programming to engineers because they think coding and electronics are complicated and difficult; actually, they can be fun and exciting activities. Whether it is sensor-based medicine, computational agriculture, you name it!, success is going to rely on being able to do computational thinking well.
In the future, it will be necessary to know how to tell a computer to do something. Designers, artists, hobbyists and students of all ages are learning to create things that light up, move, and respond to people, animals, plants, and the rest of the world. While many students seem to be using technology quite a lot, they rarely learn how it works. We should try to equip our next generation with the skills to not just use/consume technology, but to also to create and make it work for them.
What will the class teach?
So, how does one “tell a computer” anything? This class will teach students about programming languages and how computers, microcontrollers and robots are able to respond to our commands. Students will see that it doesn’t take a lot of complicated mechanics or electronics to make something fun, to make things respond to the world around them, or spark people’s imagination. At the same time, students will learn about grit, persistence and developing a growth mindset, and understand that people can improve with practice, key skills needed to become good problem solver. Programming can be learned by everyone. It’s not something that someone is born with. There is no geek gene! These are all life skills that provide benefits well beyond the computer screen.
How will the class be taught?
Each lesson will consist of different well-designed tasks and problems to challenge students’ problem solving and independent thinking abilities as well as computational thinking knowledge. During the first week, students will learn about computational thinking and the use of microcontrollers and programming languages. During the second week, students will learn to program drones and robots as well as building them to complete challenges. Using Arduino students will be moving from personal computing to personal fabrication, and contributing to a new world of participation, cooperation and sharing.
Arduino is open and simple. If you start with the assumption that learning to make digital technologies is simple and accessible, you can make it so. Suddenly electronics and code become creative tools that anyone can use, like brushes and paint.
Parrot offers a series of flying and rolling minidrones that are ultra-compact and easy-to-pilot vehicles you can control with a smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth. These will give us a chance to learn about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills, such as geometry, science, art, physics and coding with leading code-learning platforms.
Jumping Sumo is a responsive bot with a strong personality which rolls, rushes, zig-zags, circles, takes turns at 90 degrees. In a flash, it leaps upt to 80 cm in height. With its embedded camera, it plunges you into the heart of the action! Airborne Cargo weighs 1.9 ounces and boasts superior flight stability because of its 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer. It flips forward or backward and makes agile turns on a dime. It’s designed for safety, so you can fly it indoors or outdoors thanks to its propeller circuit breaker which automatically shuts things down in case of a collision.
The robotics section of the course will use NXT/EV3 LEGO Mindstorms. Students will learn to program autonomous robots that can move, react to their surrounding using sensors, and find their own way to complete challenges. Students will work in small teams to solve various programming challenges and projects.
Aims:
- Introduce different concepts of computational thinking.
- Experience programming microcontrollers and robots.
- Enhance creativity, logical thinking, problem solving, communication, collaboration, and sharing skills.
- Learn to persevere, develop grit and a growth mindset.
Students will be able to:
- Understand the nature of computational thinking and learn to solve problems.
- Communicate with microcontrollers and robots through programming languages.
- Use the computer and microcontrollers to creatively design interesting programs and inventions.
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