We are in the middle of robotics season at my school (FIRST- For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)- this is our twelfth year competing, and my 11th as a mentor. Basically, the students had six weeks to build a robot that could lift and stack bins of different sizes, along with a few other tasks. We have been to one competition, and will have one more at the end of March (about a week before I leave for Kampala).
So I've taken a lot of photos of Keenan students building the robot, at the competition, etc, but have been challenged as to how to model robotics for the students at the school in Kampala- I would like to find a way to model programming a robot but I don't want to bring a lot of excess material or technology. The Lego robotics kids the jrFLL teams use is one possibility, but seem a little simplistic. It all brings to mind a classroom in Vo-Attive I visited in Togo- where there was no electricity, but yet the exam question written on the board was, "Why can birds sit on an electric wire and not get electrocuted?" (Or something like that- the eloquence of the question has probably been lost from faulty memory and rusty translation skills.) I remember reflecting at the time how difficult it must be to really understand grounding and other electrical concepts when learning by memorization, without the benefit of hands-on activities. And yet, I suspect that the majority of students taking that exam were successful. And so I find myself brainstorming how to not just bring some flashy demo, but how to actually teach about robots in a way that could be built upon, perhaps with collaboration from my school.
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I was very excited to learn last week that I will be visiting Lubiri Secondary School in Kampala, Uganda as part of the Teachers for Global Classrooms program. Our host, Diana Nalule, teachers Information and Communication Technology. I am very curious to see how IT is taught at her school, and what lessons we all can learn from each other. As a new teacher of computer science, I am especially curious about the way students are taught to code and to use technologies. My students learn Python through an Activities, Projects, and Problems model (Project Lead the Way); it will be interesting to compare different pedagogies across cultures. Learning to code is one of the "in" topics in STEM education; I wonder how much that transcends borders, and if so, how that is accomplished. Even within my state, many different classes are classified as computer science: business applications, CAD, coding classes, and everything in between. "We must work diligently to democratize computer science learning so that no group is denied access to this fundamental knowledge. Not only is this an issue of civil rights, but computer science as a field desperately needs diverse and multiple perspectives."- Jane Margolis, author |
Kirstin Bullington
I teach science, engineering, and computer science at W.J. Keenan High School in Columbia, SC Archives
March 2016
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