Take a moment and think of how the world has changed in your lifetime. No, really. Take a minute and write down three modern conveniences you didn’t have when you were growing up. Here are my three:
- My Roomba that vacuums my house, removing the never-ending pieces of dead grass my dogs bring in from the yard.
- My Echo Dot that tells me the temperature and sets the timer for cooking jambalaya.
- The ability to deposit my travel checks with my iPhone.
Technology never stops changing and evolving to make our lives easier. In fact, I just heard about a couple more technologies on the brink of revolutionizing current processes:
- Starship is a company that makes delivery robots the size of portable printers on wheels. They are already operating in Washington, D.C., Fayetteville, AR, and two San Francisco Bay-area cities. The word on the street is they could launch in Austin sometime this year. Read the full article here.
- Justin Crandall, a Dallas entrepreneur, and his business partner Bart Lomont have co-founded Robin. This lawn care startup is rolling out robotic lawnmowers to take care of keeping your yard in top form. The company has 36 robotic lawnmowers, which run on their own and use electric power rather than gas. Read more here.
Who will need to invent, design, and program these new robots? Hopefully, you said our youth, those students running around on our playgrounds and sitting at their desks. We need our kids to shift from passive consumers of tech to improving our world with their creations and imaginations. If you’re ready to engage your students with hands-on, design-based learning, join TCEA this summer for:
Mission Possible: LEGO EV3 Robotics in the Classroom
Here are five reasons to bring robotics to your classroom or campus:
- Sensory Learning Student learn with their senses, and robotics aligns with the active, hands-on development of today’s child.
- Social Learning Communication and collaboration are key skills needed for future college and career readiness.
- Innovation Opportunities Robotics offers opportunities to build and express creativity.
- Raise the Level of Thinking Future jobs will require our students to perform at the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.
- Bring Joy into Learning Brain research suggests that fun is not just beneficial to learning, but, by many reports, required for authentic learning and long-term memory.
The workshop takes place in the TCEA Conference Center in Austin, Texas from Monday, July 15 to Friday, July 19. It is hands-on, minds-on learning and is guaranteed to have you ready to teach robotics when school starts back. It will start with the basics, but then move to more advanced concepts. Lesson ideas and lunch are included each day. For more information, topics covered, and registration details, visit this website.
Learn robotics this summer. Teach robotics this fall.
Featured image photo by author.
