Post 1: Teaching Engineering To High Schoolers
February 26, 2019
This last summer I got permission to take a couple weeks off of my research job at Walus labs in order to teach an engineering summer camp to high school students. In this blog post I would like to share my experiences, and my teaching plan for those who are interested in teaching or passionate about engineering.
To start I want the reader to know that I cherished the experience of teaching the students. It brought me back to when I was their age. Additionally, I enjoyed the opportunity to interact with kids who were interested in learning engineering from me. Overall, I was impressed with how they soaked everything up like a sponge.
The camp that I taught for was located in Richmond and operated out of McNair Secondary School in Richmond, BC. I was given the task of creating a two week plan to teach them basic engineering principles on a topic of my choice and to have them present a science fair project for the end of the camp.
I opted to create a teaching plan that involved the kids getting hands on experience with the robots. Two weeks before the beginning of the camp I ordered 3 mbot educational robotics packages. Here is a video of me making and playing around with the mbots a week before the camp.
On day one I was extremely excited. I came in on my first day, greeted the kids. I was instructed by the camp to tell the kids about my experience and my research on the first day.
Download the Intro Presentation Here
On my second day I brought in the mbots. Getting there early I set them up in a display where they were all moving simultaneously, which got a laugh from the kids.
Download the Presentation Here
The day after the students built the robots, I got permission to bring them into the computer lab.
Download the Presentation Here
The rest of the week was dedicated to the kids working towards competing in a competition which I decided to do upon talking to the students instead of further missions. Essentially the competition was a robot sumo wrestling contest.
Download the Presentation Here
Below is a video of Team 1's program winning the final.