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

British Science Week: Raspberry Pi 3

Originally posted as 

British Science Week: Let’s Talk about Raspberry Pi 3. #BSW2016 https://medium.com/@UniNorthants/national-science-week-let-s-talk-about-raspberry-pi-3-nsw2016-fbf6834b25c#.iwi50jpdd

Imagine this scenario: Sarah walks into the ICT suite, and sits down in front of a screen, keyboard and mouse and a few cables. She opens her bag and pulls out a small plastic box around the size of large match box and plugs in the cables, one each for the monitor, the keyboard, mouse and lastly the power leads to the box. One the screen after a few seconds the screen changes and she is ready to work on her coursework on the word-processor and do some searching, because this box has already connected to the wireless network.

The new Raspberry Pi 3 is exciting, but mainly because it is a Raspberry Pi and plays a huge part in what this means for the future of computing.

In the last few weeks, the scenario above took a giant step forward to being a reality with the release of Raspberry Pi 3 from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. A matchbox size computer for under £35 means that a truly personal computer is possible; one for each student or even as an alternative to shared PCs. The downloadable software used for Raspberry Pi includes the basic things most people need such as word-processing, spreadsheets, browsers, etc, and all for free.

Raspberry Pi has been around for four years now, but what puts the new Pi model a step ahead are two fundamental things:

1) Its wireless and Bluetooth connectivity are built into one for the first time

2) The processor is getting closer to that of laptops and desktop computers

Ok, so am I suggesting that schools throw out their current computers? No not for a moment.

When the time comes to renew them though, perhaps considering the advantages and disadvantages of a £30 computer instead or in the extreme scenario above, one £35 computer per student is worth considering.

The technical aspects alone are a good reason to make a Raspberry Pi 3 purchase, but in my opinion it would be the Raspberry Pi Foundation itself and it’s community that are the real advantage. The Foundation’s stated goals are “…to advance the education of adults and children, particularly in the field of computers, computer science and related subjects.”

The Foundation also owns the Code Club; a network of volunteer-led, after-school coding clubs which are committed to training teachers in computing and training on how to use Raspberry Pi through a two-day course called PiCademy.

The ace up their sleeve is that they have the support of a relatively large community of hobbyists who play with Raspberry Pi for their own fun and have a culture of sharing ideas, projects and providing support to each other. In my view this is the ‘secret sauce’; the teachers and hobbyists in the community provide and share resources very openly.

As an example, a new resource for using Raspberry Pi in science classes was recently made available and like most resources this has been produced by one or more hobbyists. One further example is the idea of PiJams; where anyone interested in finding out more or sharing what they are doing can come along and take part.

With these fantastic events in mind The University of Northampton is hosting the first Northamptonshire Raspberry Jam on the 16 April 2016. Register for free and share your knowledge or learn something new!

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

Computing at School: Junkbots project

Details of the Junkbots project lead from the Department of Computing and Immersive Technologies, University of Northampton and outline teaching material can now be found at Computing At School website or CAS Online | Junkbots project

Computing at School is an organisation that aims to promote the teaching of Computing at school and is a partnership of the BCS, industrial partners. For more details go to: http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/index.php?id=about-us

For more details on the project contact - Scott Turner

CEISE2011 paper: DEEPENING TEACHING AND LEARNING REFORM AND CONSTRUCTING AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF TOPCARES-CDIO TALENT NURTURING

An abstract from the 7th China – Europe International Symposium on Software Industry Orientated Education to be held 23-24th May 2011 at School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton, UK. For more details can be found at this link.

DEEPENING TEACHING AND LEARNING REFORM AND CONSTRUCTING AN INTEGRATED MODEL OF TOPCARES-CDIO TALENT NURTURING 

Wen Tao¹, Wang Weikun²

1 Dalian Neusoft Institute of Information, Dalian, China

2 School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dalian University of Technology, China

ABSTRACT

At present, there are many problems and difficulties in information technology (IT) talent nurturing. The application-oriented IT talent with strong theoretical knowledge and practice ability as well as professional ability and all-round development are urgently needed. Based on Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) approach, Dalian Neusoft Institute of Information (NII) constructs TOPCARES-CDIO index system to help students acquire eight kinds of skills. Enhancing students’ professional ability and all-round development through academic majors as basic units of education, NII has deeply developed application-oriented integrated talent nurturing and comprehensively explored and practiced TOPCARES-CDIO talent nurturing model.

Proceedings can be found at: http://www.web-sustainablity.net/conference/GreenConferenceBook.pdf

News: Feedback on junkbots

Feedback from the sessions in December are very encouraging. When students were asked to grade out of 5 the sessions overall ( scores with 1 being poor and 5 excellent) of the twenty replies received 100% were rate at 4 (65%)or 5(35%). In all the questions asked, the feedback was in the majority rated three or above.

For this group of the students the creative aspects of the activities engaged them and this was reflected in their feedback. Quotes from some of the students:
“it was fun and creative, I learnt quite a bit”
“It let use be creative with our design.”
“it opened my eyes to engineering”
This last on is especially of note as the aim of the project is to encourage engagement with Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) subjects.

The waste management activities seem to engage from the point of view of helping them to understand their own impact both positively and negatively.
“...it was cool to know what my carbon footprint is.”
“... made me think about all the waste in the world.”
“[I] now recycle”

An observation that needs to be unpacked a little more is the language the students used. Each reply was an individual reply, but in many cases ‘we’ and ‘us’ was used. This could be indicative that these students did see it as a group activity (which it was intended to be). A couple of quotes from one of the students on this point
“We liked this activity because it help us work as a team.”
“We really enjoyed ourselves over the last 4 days. We found it very useful.”