There’s nothing better in education than providing students with an open-ended challenge and seeing them problem solve, persist, collaborate, teach each other and generally just have bucket loads of fun. That’s what I’ve been privileged to witness this year with our Robotics Club. Here’s a reflection how I run our club and why I love it.
Format
Our robotics club meets once a week after school for just over an hour in our Innovation Precinct makerspace and our digital technologies hub. Students come along when they can, but most attend every week.
The group is very student led. We don’t direct what activities they are going to do, or run tutorials. We also don’t currently compete in any leagues or challenges.
What we do
I started the group off this year with a quick overview of all the tech they had at their disposal and asked them what they might like to do. They weren’t sure, so we decided to try a bit of everything and then go back to what they enjoyed. We started by using Lego motors and battery packs to design a battle bot. Most students are still deeply engaged with this, adapting and redesigning. Our female students were keen to try engineering kits, which I purchased from Kiwi Co. Two have continued with that, while the others have moved onto a design thinking challenge using our Micromellon robots. One student then asked to explore what else we had, keen to find an Arduino, which we did. He also found a computer building kit and decided to try to get that to work. It was a challenge, but he was incredibly persistent. Eventually, he discovered the supporting software was no longer available, so he broke the kit into pieces and started to use the Raspberry Pi at its core to explore building his own version. That led us to raiding the storeroom again, finding more recent Raspberry Pis and Pi components. Then another student got interested in what he was doing and the pair started to problem solve together. As they made things work – slowly – and celebrated their wins, other students became interested. Suddenly I had 12 students working on Raspberry Pis, 2 on engineering kits, 2 on design thinking challenges with Micromellons and the rest still building battle bots with Lego. A few of those Lego builders wanted a bit more of a challenge, so back into the storeroom we went, this time finding some old Mindstorm kits. One had been destroyed by batteries leaking but the others were fine, so that became another group, now working to build with and figure out how to use those.
It takes time to build
I started the group last year and really struggled to be on duty, provide the group challenges and run the esports team at the same time. Good intentions fell apart as I had to fill staffing gaps and more work was added to my load and turns out you can’t do it all. I decided to hand back the esports and robotics team and hoped another staff member would be able to run them. Sadly, no one stepped up and I had multiple students and parents contact me about when robotics club would resume. I’ve always wanted to have more time to dabble in robotics, so I decided to take it on again. This time, our sign-ups were even stronger with 26 students who regularly attend and more who’ve recently joined. We also have a group of girls who have their own side group, part of the whole robotics team but also wanting to be identified specially as women in STEM and proud of it.
Knowledge I don’t need
I have zero idea how to code a Raspberry Pi. I honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between an Ardunio, Raspberry Pi and Micro:bit. I do know they exist and that’s about all the content knowledge I’ve needed to facilitate our robotics club. I love robotics and coding and I wish I had more time to learn about these things. I understand the basics, but I really don’t have a lot of experience or knowledge and that has meant the students really have to figure it out and they are. It is absolutely thrilling to watch them find a new interest – Raspberry Pi in this case – and then start to work together with the resources they have (magazine I provided, Raspberry Pi website and AI) to continually problem solve. To watch one student have success and then create a quick guide for his peers, print it out and share it with them. To watch another student go off on a deep dive into a side interest (3D modelling something to 3D print to integrate with the Pi). And to watch other students continually face challenges and not give up, long after I would have given up. And then to see the pure exhilaration on their faces as they cheer and clap when they made it work (well, they got it to connect to the screen, but they were so excited).
The skills I have needed are
An openness to let the group be student led and directed.
What they are interested in, that’s where we go. I work with them and provide the support and direction, when or if they need it. For example, the girls wanting to use Micromellons weren’t super keen on just solving basic challenges, but the idea of a design thinking challenge thrilled them. I quickly created 5 options (using AI to assist), they picked one – the hospital resource delivery challenge – and I created and had printed the map of the hospital in giant format for their Micromellon to navigate. I watch for when students need more of a challenge – like the group building with Lego and needing to be extended with the Mindstorms.
An ability to source what they need
Micro HDMI to HDMI cord? Sure no worries, let me look that up and purchase you some. Need an extra mouse? Let me just go borrow one from my colleagues’s desk (I replaced it, don’t worry). Something to build a robotic arm that moves? Not sure, but let’s go dive into the storeroom and see what we can find. I’m there as a facilitator and resource provider. I think my main role is in supplying batteries. The rest, we figure out together.
An understanding that each student is different
I hate being confined or my choices limited, so why would they? And this is not curriculum based, so I’ve been intentional in letting the students choose what they want to do and for how long. When they are ready to move on, we will.
The ability to guide students through working with others
I honestly don’t have to step in often, but sometimes the students need a bit of help including others when they are so focused on their project, or understanding how to share resources. But for the most part, they work incredibly well together.
So, that’s how I run robotics club. And I love it.