Information Technology Education

I recently received a grant from APS to get my students started with hummingbird robotics. Here is a summary of the grant proposal from the APS site: Explorer Middle School, Phoenix Students Impacted: 97 Project Title: Middle School Makers Grant: $1,950 Description: "Middle School Makers" will involve programming and creating robotics, kinetic sculptures and animatronics using Hummingbird kit materials.   I envisioned it as a way to have them make, create, and program.  Using an Arduino device and a variety of LEDs and sensors partnered with the CREATE Lab Visual Program, my students are off and running already on day one! There are a series of video tutorials that make it easy for anyone to wire and program.  They created a variety of sounds with the text-to-speech feature and are well on their way to creating animatronics.  The CREATE Lab makes it simple to create expressions and then sequence them.  We will work on exploring loops and getting our creatures...

I got to thinking the other day about the myriad of STEM competitions and challenges that are out there any how many emails I receive on a regular basis about them...app inventing challenges, science fairs, math competitions, essay contests...the list goes on.  They are such valuable learning opportunities for students and add what Volkwagen calls the 'fun' theory to life.  Bring a challenge into the classroom and it adds a whole different level of motivation and engagement. Fun Theory As a teacher, while I always saw the value in challenges and competitions, they were also a bit stressful due to deadlines and coordinating school schedules and worktime.  This year, though, I tried to integrate them with the standards that I am teaching anyway and bring them into my classroom.  It's been great!  The powerful thing about these STEM challenges is that they are open-ended and that there is no limit to how high or far you can go.  The limit is the students' imag...