{"id":1980,"date":"2011-06-09T12:44:50","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T17:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/?p=1980"},"modified":"2020-08-17T17:56:16","modified_gmt":"2020-08-17T17:56:16","slug":"robotics-engages-students-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/2011\/06\/09\/robotics-engages-students-experts-say\/","title":{"rendered":"Robotics engages students, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

From: eSchool News<\/a>
\nJune 7, 2011
\nBy Jenna Zwang, Assistant Editor<\/p>\n

Engaging students at younger ages and making science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education more appealing were some of the main topics up for discussion at a roundtable discussion hosted by LEGO Education and National Instruments on June 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think a lot of kids [who] are sitting in classrooms aren\u2019t engaged, because we aren\u2019t stimulating them,\u201d said Joan Abdallah of the American Association of the Advancement of Science (AAAS). \u201cIf we really engage the kids using various kinds of technology, I think we could be very successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

One such technology cited by Abdallah is a recently-released robotics program from LEGO Education and National Instruments. The LEGO Education WeDo Robotics Construction Set is an easy-to-use set that introduces elementary-school students to robotics, while LEGO MINDSTORMS Education is aimed at middle and high schools. LEGO also has released LEGO MINDSTORMS Education + TETRIX for use in high schools and colleges.<\/p>\n

In April, National Instruments introduced LabView for LEGO MINDSTORMS, a new education-focused version of the company\u2019s professional LabVIEW graphical design software developed specifically for the use of LEGO Education robots. Students learn from the same software used by scientists and engineers while visually controlling and programming their robots.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Students] want to create systems themselves, they want to design the game, they don\u2019t want to play someone else\u2019s game,\u201d said Hunter Smith, K-12 product marketing engineer at National Instruments. \u201cWith robotics, there\u2019s no correct answer, there\u2019s no final solution, so everyone can create their own solution\u2014and as long as you solve the challenge, you win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith said science activities too often don\u2019t engage students, because they are too structured.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of times, in physics, it feels like you\u2019re doing the lab for the lab\u2019s sake, that you\u2019re doing it for the grade and not for the science. You do this in robotics, and [students] stop thinking about the grade and they start thinking about all the crazy robots they can build. It\u2019s inherently open-ended, and it\u2019s real,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Stephan Turnipseed, the president of LEGO Education in North America, said the robotics program can be used to address community issues and help solve needs.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see a lot of teachers using robotics to engage in storytelling, which really has been interesting as it was an unexpected outcome,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

However, engaging students is far from the only issue facing STEM education. According to the panel, many STEM teachers are not well trained, especially at the elementary level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a huge need in elementary education for much better-prepared, skilled teachers, because if you have that and you can bring [good] math and science teachers in, the whole system is going to benefit,\u201d said David Mandel, director of research and policy analysis with the National Center on Education and the Economy.<\/p>\n

Abdallah agreed that a change is necessary.<\/p>\n

\u201cTeachers are ill prepared or unprepared by the universities, so it\u2019s not their fault that they can\u2019t do it,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you ask your average elementary school teacher if they\u2019d like to teach robotics, they run screaming into the night,\u201d Turnipseed said. \u201cSo we had to change our language.\u201d He pointed out that when Smith teaches a programming course, he uses terminology designed to pique students\u2019 curiosity, as opposed to confusing them with technical terms too early.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Smith] takes a very complex engineering idea and he says, \u2018What we\u2019re going to do right now is find out how fast this wiggles,\u2019 rather than a fast Fourier transform, which is what we\u2019re really doing mathematically,\u201d Turnipseed said.<\/p>\n

But there also have been some positive changes in terms of publicizing STEM education careers, panelists said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there is a trend of making science more important in our country. When you start to see more CSI and MythBusters and fewer reality shows, I think even if there\u2019s just bits of science or aspects of science, making that a part of our culture reinforces it with kids,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

Mandel pointed out the need for science education to begin at an earlier age.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Chinese and American kids are two years old, they look the same in terms of quantitative literacy. When they\u2019re five years old, before they start school, there\u2019s a huge difference; Chinese kids are way ahead, and it\u2019s because dealing with numbers and measurement is something that goes on between parents and kids in China but not here,\u201d Mandel said. He said that in the United States, parents teach their children the alphabet and how to read but don\u2019t place any emphasis on numbers or understanding mathematics.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne thing that\u2019s coming down the pike are national science standards, and that\u2019s going to start a big conversation including what should be going on in science in elementary education,\u201d Mandel said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot of inertia to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From: eSchool News June 7, 2011 By Jenna Zwang, Assistant Editor Engaging students at younger ages and making science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education more appealing were some of the main topics up for discussion at a roundtable discussion … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robot-news","category-teaching_tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1980"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5371,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions\/5371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.dankohn.info\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}