Summer of Innovation at The Harbour School: Robotics
Written by Mark Barnett, BSD Education
This summer will kick off The Harbour School’s new extra-curricular program called F.I.S.H. (Fully Immersive Scholar’s Holiday) for students during out-of-school holidays. This innovative program will provide opportunities for students to take a deeper dive in the Foundry into projects such as robotics, video game design, and advanced manufacturing. One of the courses that I am most looking forward to is Robotics and I think students will be just as excited because when you program a robot to move by 90 degrees, you see it actually move, which makes mathematics more tangible for hands-on learners. For this course, we will be participating in an off-season FIRST LEGO League Challenge.
During this course, students will design, build and program an autonomous robot to complete missions in a competition. By working in small teams, students will collaborate by choosing missions that relate to the theme of water, water sanitation and city water infrastructure. Along with learning how to build and program robots, we will be taking a look at real-world issues that cities like Hong Kong face when it comes to the use and transportation of water. Students will also be visiting a local water treatment center to see first hand how water is treated, stored and transported.
Learning to program robots is an exciting way to apply math skills to solve problems. Because the robots are autonomous and not driven with a remote, every turn, angle and rotation must be precisely calculated and programmed. During the week, we will focus on math skills like: measuring angles, degrees of rotation, gear ratio, measuring distance and calculating speed over time. This innovative program goes beyond a traditional robotics program by providing context to the robot missions, giving students a reason to design and build so that they can also solve real-world problems relating to how cities use water. With the growing concern over how water will be distributed and shared among a global population, this challenge will set students on a path of thinking about the future.
We hope that you will sign your scholars up for our F.I.S.H. program and take the plunge into Robotics. See here for more information!
Interested in learning more about robotics? Email Mark at info@bsd.education or read more of his articles at https://medium.com/@maker_mark"
