Robot Arms in Schools Project

Santander UK recently provided the funding for an outreach project within the Department of Computing, University of Northampton - loaning robot arm kits, which are pretty much self-contained, out to schools to see what they can come up with and share with the wider community. 

The project is provide a robot arm kit to support computing and STEAM activities for a year and the schools taking part write a blog post (or more than one) http://robotschools.blogspot.co.uk/, sharing what they have done. Ten kits have been made available.

 

The chosen kit is the CBiS Education robot arm hub - select as it comes with the robot arm, cables, raspberry pi computer, etc as well as screen, keyboard and mouse (see the picture above). So it has everything needed to get going within a few minutes.  

In the first five days of the robot arms kits going into the schools, over half the ten robot arm kits are now in schools - four Primary schools and two Secondary Schools. 

Here are some of the tweets about what has happened already.

Also get free #Cardboard2Code Part1 https://t.co/f0LF1LMzls Part2 https://t.co/ywGtp3VVU3 @Tiffybum @scottturneruon pic.twitter.com/LZ5HV1UC9E

— CBiS Education (@cbiseducation) June 9, 2016

@scottturneruon @cbiseducation Arm up & running, and we are already tinkering! This will be a fun year! pic.twitter.com/slWDPZ92B2

— Stacey (@Tiffybum) June 9, 2016

Getting ready to talk about the Robot Arm project at #tmplaydate @santanderuk @UniNorthants pic.twitter.com/tpYbRM4WTP

— Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 8, 2016

Scott Turner is looking for volunteers to test his robot arms in schools #TMplaydate pic.twitter.com/2denb4oWSC

— Helen Caldwell (@HelenCaldwel) June 8, 2016

. @santanderuk sponsored @UniNorthants supported Robot Arm kits were used at @codeclub @DustonStLukes pic.twitter.com/jGNpLcK78P

— Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 7, 2016

@scottturneruon @santanderuk Very excited to play with the robot arm. Thank you. 

— KayS (@kay_simons) June 7, 2016

First of the robot arm kits is @roadeprimarysch - fun setting it during @codeclub today @UniNorthants @santanderuk pic.twitter.com/QK45Xlcs9x

— Scott Turner (@scottturneruon) June 6, 2016

The project team are grateful to Santander UK for the funding; CBiS Education for their support and advice so far; last but not least the schools who have enthusiastically expressed an interest in taking part or who are taking part now. A blog for the project is now available at http://robotschools.blogspot.co.uk/.

If you'd like to find out more about Computing at the University of Northampton go to: www.computing.northampton.ac.uk. All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with