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SPARK (Starter Programs for the Advancement of Robotic Knowledge)

Educational Resources

Cool Stuff
Programs
Resources for High School Teachers, Parents and Students
Teaching Resources

Curricular Unit

Robotics Primer Workbook  (expand)

http://roboticsprimer.sourceforge.net/workbook/Main_Page

Welcome to The Robotics Primer Workbook. The Workbook is a stand-alone resource as well as a companion for "The Robotics Primer" by Maja J Mataric, published by MIT Press in June 2007. This workbook is designed as a general introduction to robotic programming. You will find a wide range of exercises in the sections below, from simple sensing to group robotics and robot learning.

Platform: iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

LEGO Education Website  (expand)

http://www.lego.com/eng/education/mindstorms/default.asp

Robotics is a popular and effective way for teachers to cover important areas of their Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math curricula. The LEGO MINDSTORMS Education series are tailor-made for classroom and after-school activity use. They include construction sets, programming tools, and curriculum relevant activity packs.

Platform: LEGO


Contributed by: Danielle

LEGO Engineering  (expand)

http://www.legoengineering.com/

LEGOEngineering.com is dedicated to providing educators with resources for teaching through engineering with LEGO materials.

Platform: LEGO


Contributed by: Cara

Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Academy  (expand)

http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/roboticscurriculum/index.html

The Robotics Academy is committed to using the motivational effects of robotics to excite students about science and technology. We are an educational outreach of Carnegie Mellon University, and part of the university's world-renowned Robotics Institute. The Robotics Academy offers robotics curricula at the middle school, high school, and college levels based on LEGO and VEX platforms.

Platform: LEGO, VEX


Contributed by: Cara

ASU Mars Robotics Lesson  (expand)

http://marsed.asu.edu/resources

Learn about Newton's Laws, technology, and, of course, robotics in this fun series of activities. Students will learn what it takes to design and build a robotic mission to the Red Planet. Activities can be completed individually or as an integrated robotics unit. The activities are aligned with the National Science Education Standards.

Platform: None needed


Contributed by: Cara

Razor Robotics  (expand)

http://www.razorrobotics.com/

Razor Robotics is dedicated to robot education and offers a wide variety of resources to help everyone, from the newest to the most experienced student roboticists.


Contributed by: bigglesuk1

Educator Training

TechStart Education Foundation  (expand)

http://techstart.org/

TechStart Education Foundation offers K-12 teacher technology training on topics including robotics, Flash and web design, and game creation.


Contributed by: Danielle

The STOMP Network  (expand)

http://www.stompnetwork.org/

Welcome to the STOMP Network. This site is designed to be an online resource to unite university-based Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) outreach programs across the country and throughout the world. This effort is driven by the Student Teacher Outreach Mentorship Program (STOMP), originating at the Tufts University Center for Engineering Educational Outreach.

It is the intention of this site to build a community of STEM outreach programs similar in nature to the STOMP model. This site serves to provide resources, activities, research, and experiences from STEM outreach programs, that can be shared to help strengthen current programs and disseminate STOMP models.

Platform: LEGO


Contributed by: Cara

Hands-On Activity

Roboworld  (expand)

http://www.visitroboworld.com/visitroboworld/lessonplans.aspx

Includes activities for grades K-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12.  Most activities use readily accessible materials or are entirely computer-based.

Platform: Not required


Contributed by: Danielle

Mentoring for Connections to Computing  (expand)

http://www.ece.uc.edu/mc2/browse.php

MC2 offers both computer- and non-computer-based activities to get high school students interested and excited in computer science concepts: http://www.ece.uc.edu/mc2/browse.php


Contributed by: Danielle

Bristlebot  (expand)

http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php?story=bristlebot

This page from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories shows how to make a Bristlebot, a tiny robot that is controlled by a single, vibrating motor. Younger kids may need an adult’s help to complete the project.


Contributed by: Cara

Introduction to Engineering with Paper Airplanes  (expand)

http://spark.irobot.com/index.php/educational_resources/story_detail/sp4rl/v/materials_intro_to_engineering_with_paper_airplanes

Steven Oakland, an instructor at the PATH public high school in Boston, has created this classroom activity to introduce the engineering process using paper airplanes.


Contributed by: Cara

Index/Links

NASA Resources for Educators  (expand)

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/index.html

The site includes NASA's Education Materials Finder, to help teachers locate resources that can be used in the classroom. Users may search by keywords, grade level, product type and subject. With hundreds of publications and Web sites indexed, the finder is the best way to locate NASA educational resources.


Contributed by: Danielle

Engineering Pathway  (expand)

http://www.engineeringpathway.com/ep/index.jhtml

Engineering Pathway provides a digital library of engineering teaching resources to the K-12 Education and Higher Education communities. Engineering Pathway also provides education-level specific information about preparing courses, developing engineering curricula, and national standards and accreditation programs.


Contributed by: Danielle

National Center for Women & Information Technology Digital Library  (expand)

http://www.ncwit.org/resources.library.html

NCWIT is the National Center for Women & Information Technology. They are a coalition of more than 170 prominent corporations, academic institutions, government agencies, and non-profits working to increase women's participation in information technology (IT). NCWIT has partnered with the University of California at Berkeley and the Engineering Pathway to build a comprehensive and diverse digital library of rich media, articles, research papers, curricula, and partner organizations on the topics of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, computing and gender.


Contributed by: Danielle

Science Buddies  (expand)

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/

Hands-on scientific investigations are acknowledged to be the best way to teach science literacy. Science Buddies supports these activities by providing free science fair project ideas, answers, and tools to teachers, parents, and students from all walks of life. Our objective is to save our users time while guiding them to a successful outcome.

The Kenneth Lafferty Hess Family Charitable Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt, non-profit public charity founded in 1995. In 2001, the Foundation began its sole operating program: Science Buddies. Science Buddies is located in the San Francisco Bay Area, but serves millions of students from all over the United States and the world.


Contributed by: Cara

Let's make robots  (expand)

http://letsmakerobots.com/

Letsmakerobots.com is a community of fun loving robot enthusiasts all over the globe. Fritsl (4) once started the website in 2008 because there was nothing like it on the web. All the work here is done by volunteers.


Contributed by: Cara

Interactive

NASA Education Robotics Website  (expand)

http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/robotics/home/index.html

Innovation, creativity, problem solving -- the world of robotics at NASA is all of these things. Spend some time on this site to see if robotics might be in your future.


Contributed by: Cara

Lesson Plan

Learning Roomba   (expand)

http://gicl.cs.drexel.edu/wiki/LearningRoomba

Learning Roomba is a collection of free tools and materials to support an educational curriculum focused on robotics. The tools are designed around the iRobot Roomba, a low-cost robotics platform that is great for educational projects. Learning Roomba is geared toward pre-college students with an emphasis on grades 6 - 9.

The materials provided are (1) a software toolkit to enable using the iRobot Roomba as an educational platform, (2) a Teacher's introductory guide, (3) a series of five modules each consisting of a Teacher's guide, Student's guide, Presentation Slides in Microsoft PowerPoint format, and Presentation Slides in PDF format, and (4) other related resources developed in conjunction with this work. The Teacher's introductory guide explains how to use the Modules.

The contact for this work is Drew Housten (dth29@drexel.edu or dhousten@gmail.com). This was developed out of his master's thesis work at Drexel University during 2008. Comments are more than welcome as this is intended to be a continuous work in progress. In addition, if you create more modules expanding the concepts or topics, they can be posted here.

Platform: iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

Robotics Educator 2.5 Curriculum Guide  (expand)

http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/roboticscurriculum/curriculum/curriculum_2.5.pdf

Today, one discovery leads to another. Each new discovery is shared with a network of innovators across the world, which in turn leads to other discoveries; information grows exponentially. There have been studies that suggest that the total knowledge of humankind doubles every four years. This growth of information has led to changes in the way that teachers teach, as well as the organizers they must select to prepare children to be contributors in the modern world. Robotics, as an organizer of content, offers educators a unit of study that implicitly demonstrates the application of math, science, and technology as well as introduces children to technological literacy as they develop the following work related competencies: project and time management, resource allocation, information accessing, systems understanding, team work, and problem solving. Robotics allows teachers to introduce academic concepts in contexts that make sense to children. Children begin to understand the digital world that they grow up in.

This curriculum guide is designed to use the LEGO® Challenge Set, the Robotics Educator, the ROBOLABTM video trainer, and the Robotics Educator companion workbook. The Robotics Academy continues to develop additional resources which can be found at the academy website at www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu .

This set of instructional units focuses on:
• Introduction to robotics
• Basic programming
• Electronic control
• Advanced programming using variables
• Mechanics
• Design engineering
• Scientific processes
• Project management, problem solving, teaming, and the development of workplace competencies.

Platform: LEGO


Contributed by: Cara

Outreach Program

Institute for Computing Education  (expand)

http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt

ICE is the Institute for Computing Education. ICE is a partnership between the Georgia Department of Education and the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. This partnership was announced in June 2004 by Kathy Cox, Georgia's State Superintendent of Schools, and Dean Richard DeMillo of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. ICE has provided links for teachers to materials and information relating to computer science, robotics, programming, and other related topics at http://coweb.cc.gatech.edu/ice-gt/163.


Contributed by: Danielle

Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach  (expand)

http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/

The Tufts University Center for Engineering Education & Outreach (CEEO) is a leader in supporting efforts to integrate engineering into K-12 education. The CEEO consists of four divisions or pillars working closely to ultimately achieve the mission: Outreach, Educational technology development, Research, and Student workshops and teacher professional development.


Contributed by: Cara

Tufts STOMP  (expand)

http://www.stompnetwork.org/

The Tufts University STOMP program was the first of many STOMP sites in existence today. As the flagship, Tufts STOMP has offered programs to both its main campus in Medford/Somerville, MA and its Boston Campus for over 10 years. The program at Tufts has always been a paid $10/hr job for both undergraduate and graduate students to participate in up to 8-10 hrs/week. Each semester the program averages about 35 fellows of all ages from a variety of disciplines ranging from engineering to child development.

The main goal for Tufts is to partner pairs of fellows with K-12 teachers in the greater Boston area to create an engineering curriculum that reaches across all disciplines, peaks the students' interests in engineering, and improves the students' problem-solving skills. The engineering curriculum also specifically meets the standards required by the Science, Technology, and Engineering component of the Massachusetts Frameworks.

Platform: LEGO


Contributed by: Cara

WizKidz Science and Technology Centers  (expand)

http://www.wizkidztech.org/

WizKidz Science and Technology Centers, Inc. is a Georgia 501(c)(3)Non-Profit organization that offers after school and summer academic enrichment program for elementary and middle school students and give high school students a pre-college learning structure that outline concepts that are important in the understanding of science, technology, engineering and math. The multi-component initiative addresses the unique needs of youth to help them achieve success and provide a constructive outlet.


Contributed by: Cara

Software Tool / Environment

PREOP   (expand)

http://cs.ua.edu/PREOP/

PREOP (Providing Robotic Experiences Through Object-Based Programming; formally called MARE) combines both syntax free programming with robotics to provide students with a relevant learning experience that thoughtfully transitions students to traditional languages. PREOP affects both retention and skill acquisition by exploiting linkages between confidence, competence and relevance.

PREOP utilizes the Alice programming environment to control an iRobot Create through a BAM (Bluetooth Adapter Module). The PREOP website includes both the necessary software downloads as well as instructional materials.

Platform: iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

Pyro  (expand)

http://pyrorobotics.org/?page=Using_20the_20Roomba

Pyro stands for Python Robotics. The goal of the project is to provide a programming environment for easily exploring advanced topics in artificial intelligence and robotics without having to worry about the low-level details of the underlying hardware. Supported robots include the iRobot Create (see http://pyrorobotics.org/?page=Using_20the_20Roomba).

Platforms: Various, including the iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

Microsoft Robotics Studio  (expand)

http://www.microsoft.com/robotics/

The Microsoft(r) Robotics Developer Studio 2008 R2 (Microsoft RDS) is a Windows(r)-based environment for academic, hobbyist, and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware.

Microsoft RDS includes a lightweight asynchronous services-oriented runtime, a set of visual authoring and simulation tools, as well as templates, tutorials, and sample code to help you get started.

Platform: LEGO, iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

Tekkotsu  (expand)

http://tekkotsu.org/

Tekkotsu means "iron bones" in Japanese, often used in the context of buildings' structural framework. Similarly, this software package aims to give you a structure on which to build, handling routine tasks so that you can focus on higher level programming.

Tekkotsu is an application development framework for intelligent robots, it uses an object-oriented and event-passing architecture, making full use of the template and inheritance features of C++. It was originally written for the Sony AIBO, but has since grown to run on a variety of different robots.

Platform: Various, including iRobot Create


Contributed by: Danielle

SAM Animation Home Page  (expand)

http://www.samanimation.com/

SAM Animation is software designed to give students the power of making stop-action movies to share their ideas and understanding. The software is easy to use and provides a unique experience for students to explore challenging problems in any subject through creating animations. The SAM Animation software is in development and thus feedback, discussion, and ideas are welcome. The site includes links to forums and a wiki on which educators can share SAM-based activities and movies made using SAM.


Contributed by: Cara

Matlab Toolbox for the iRobot Create (MTiC)  (expand)

http://www.usna.edu/Users/weapsys/esposito/roomba.matlab/

The iRobot Create is a reprogrammable version of the Roomba robot vacuum cleaner for robotics hobbyists, educators and researchers. Out of the package, users can use their PC to control the robot by sending numerical sentences over a serial connection.

Two obstacles, especially for educational purposes, are: (1) the cryptic nature of the command interface; and (2) the difficulty in establishing a software serial port connection to the robot. This Matlab toolbox seeks to overcome these difficulties.

Platform: iRobot Create


Contributed by: Cara