NEWS

Teachers learn to teach robotics at RAMTEC camp

John Jarvis
Reporter

MARION – Faith Damico turned her earrings into a computer keyboard, controlling the animated figure on her laptop monitor, but instructor Jeff Branson challenged her to do more.

“Think about a story that you know and you love,” said Branson, educational outreach coordinator at SparkFun Electronics, a Boulder, Colorado-based online retail electronics store. “Make it look like that. ... It’s something you love. You know it already. Just find it. That’s all you’ve got to do.”

Damico, a 16-year-old junior at Tri-Rivers Career Center, was learning how to use Makey Makey, a physical interface that once plugged into a computer essentially allows the user to turn objects, from bananas to play dough, into computer keyboards.

She was one of a couple dozen students and teachers who are participating in a RAMTEC camp this week at Tri-Rivers, which is aimed at helping teachers present robotics while introducing elementary, middle and high school students to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

“They’re learning a bunch of stuff,” said Branson, who was leading the instruction along with his wife, Beverly Ball, a welding/art teacher and founder of TinkerBelles, an all-girls maker club. “They’re learning the properties of materials. They’re learning computational and mathematical thinking. They’re learning self-advocacy, and they’re learning they can approach something they don’t know and if they have the right set of questions they’ll get what they need out of it.”

The camp began Monday with a session for teachers only, with students invited by the teachers individually participating for two days. It ended with another teacher-only class Thursday.

“What we want to show the teachers is how we engage kids with this, how we present material so they can go back to their classrooms and take their respective lesson plans and fit this in: ... new technology, new teaching techniques and swapping them out for things that don’t have the level of engagement that we see in this room,” he said. “So we want to present this in such a way that they see it modeled, and that they can then pick that tool up and give it to kids in such a way that we get that level of engagement.”

Branson provides similar instruction each year across North America.

The engagement during the Tuesday afternoon class manifested itself in frequent bursts of questions, laughter and meowing from a computer character created by 12-year-old McKenzie Redmon, a seventh-grader at Grant Middle School.

“It’s my first time doing it,” she said, leaning over her laptop. “I have made him jump, ... move, run” and meow while Branson effortlessly facilitated the discussion, posing queries and challenges, and drawing eager responses from his students.

Ritch Ramey, coordinator for Robotics & Advanced Manufacturing Technology Education Collaborative, said he even learned how to do origami, the Japanese art of folding paper into shapes.

“I’ve never done origami before, and I had to build a shrimp today,” Ramey said.

Organizer of the program through Straight A and Honda grants, he said this week’s camp added art to the STEM curriculum seeking to interest students as young as those in third grade.

“We’re trying to introduce technology, but you can’t just do your traditional robotics projects,” he said. “We want students to learn a lot of the different components like electronics, so we thought if we threw the art in there it would be a good way to hook them in this, plus it’s something that meets the standards. All the stuff meets Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. Teachers could take these projects and actually implement them in the elementary schools and junior highs.”

Tad Douce, director of innovation and development at META Solutions, will help build the online curriculum that grows out of the RAMTEC camp, and automation engineer Clay Hammock will be “heavily involved” in the project, Ramey said.

Rick Lehman, Grant Middle School robotics teacher, said the camp introduced him to Makey Makey and Arduino boards, among other new tools.

“We’re going to take all this knowledge back with us — I’ve got 350 students in my program — and all these kids are going to become experts at teaching them about these platforms,” Lehman said.

One of the platforms, Scratch, allows users to program their own interactive stories, games and animations.

“It’s an entry-level programming platform,” he said. “It’s graphical. It’s block-based. You click and drag it rather than type in it. It allows them to create programs by clicking and dragging without having to memorize the commands. It’s a great stepping stone.”

jjarvis@marionstar.com

740-375-5154

Twitter: @jmwjarvis