The field of robotics is on fire right now. The top two jobs on LinkedIn’s list of emerging jobs in 2020 are “artificial intelligence specialist” and “robotics engineer.” Last year, machinedesign.com declared that automation via robotics is revolutionizing American manufacturing, noting “New waves of technology such as 3D printing and computer-aided simulation, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and sensing and data analytics have created new automation fields that did not exist 10 years ago. In turn, they’re building an automation-centric manufacturing future.” The United States will be competing with other countries for an edge in these fields for decades to come – so the future looks bright indeed for highly-educated skilled workers who can design, program, operate and/or troubleshoot and maintain robots.
Recognizing these trends – school districts across the valley now offer robotics courses to get middle school and high school students started in the STEAM fields of science, technology, engineering, art and math.
Joan Gubler teaches robotics at La Quinta Middle School. She says, “I volunteered because I saw how much it did for my boys. They learned to plan, set a goal and get it done. It just lit a little fire for them. Both of them have decided to do engineering. The oldest went on to study aerospace engineering & mechanics at the University of Minnesota. My youngest is currently studying mechanical engineering at Northern Arizona University.”
The kids in Gubler’s class start with a kit from Vex Robotics – sort of a high tech erector set with metal pieces, screws and a microcomputer “brain”. They have to build a robot and then write the program to automate it – so they can control the mechanical system.
Their after-school club competes in an annual Vex World competition. This year it is called the Tower Takeover, and the task is to program the robot to pick up small blocks and move them. They have to sketch out their designs and communicate with each other effectively and be able to explain it face to face, draw it and write out a summary. Gubler says, “They have to learn how to divide and conquer. They have to dedicate teams to building and programming. So, it’s problem solving, teamwork, setting goals and making plans. They learn how to do all of that.”
At some competitions, students have to form an alliance with another team they’ve never met and then go against another pair of teams, which fosters the ability to adapt to a new group dynamic. She says robotics also trains kids to think like an engineer: “Doing the programming gives them that algorithmic, step-by step mindset.” The students determine the order in which commands need to be executed in order for the robot to accomplish the task. They program the unit to respond to incoming data from sensors.
The teams have to learn time management by setting smaller goals along the way in order to be ready for the competition. And they learn what all innovators know: failure can be just as important as success. “They try things out and they fail. They don’t get discouraged; they try again. They don’t give up, they keep looking for different ways to change things, to keep going. And that’s a valuable lesson right there.”
Mary Perry with Desert Sands Unified School District says “DSUSD understands that the careers our students will be pursuing in just a few years don’t even exist today. Most of them will involve high levels of technology including robotics.” The newest elementary school in the district, Richard Oliphant Elementary, is a computer science immersion school where kids learn to code using Lego Robotics.
John Glenn Middle School and Palm Desert Charter Middle School blazed the trail, first offering robotics fifteen and fourteen years ago, respectively. La Quinta High has 40 kids in their robotics/Botball after-school club. Palm Desert High School includes robotics in its science classes and has been competing in robotics on the national level for several years. Indio High School includes robotics as part of the engineering career technical education curriculum.
The robotics program at Palm Springs Unified School District is brand new this year. About 200 students take part in robotics at all of the middle schools plus Bubbling Wells and Rancho Mirage Elementary Schools. The kids will take part in two district tournaments this year, with the first one in March. Will Carr, Director of Educational Technology Information Services with PSUSD, says STEM is getting more and more emphasis in our local schools in order to promote “innovation, engineering, coding and school connectedness.”
CVUSD has robotics at the middle school level – with teachers trained by a nonprofit called SMaRT Education (desertrobotics.com). SMaRT Education stands for Science, Math and Robotic Technology. It was founded in 2010 by two local moms, Maria Wren and Liberty Naud, who had started a robotics club and then a competitive team at Reagan Elementary in Palm Desert. SMaRT Education now has a dedicated space at the Palm Springs Air Museum, called Sci Tech Academy, where they run camps during school breaks. The next one will run 830-430pm January 6-10, and costs $140 for the week.
They also run a program called SMART Wednesdays at Katherine Finchy Elementary School in Palm Springs for $15 per class. They work with Inspire and Julian charter homeschool programs, and this month they are kicking off a partnership to bring their mobile STEAM lab to the Boys and Girls Club in Palm Springs. In the past they have also worked with the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition, and public libraries.
Wren says, “You can teach and learn anything through robotics. There’s computer programming and engineering. But you can find infinite ways to use it to implement science concepts. It is one of the best ways to teach applied mathematics. It gives kids a real world, in-their-hand answer to the question that every kid asks: “Why do I need to know this? Whatever you’re going to do in life you can always benefit from understanding how things work.”
Middle and high-school robotics teams can compete in massive tournaments across the country. SMaRT Education supports the First Robotics competitions, which is announcing its new season January 4th.
Another well-known program is the International Botball® Tournament sponsored by the Global Conference on Educational Robotics (GCER) which is based in Palo Alto. In 2018 the five-day event was held right here in the Coachella Valley and attracted 15 teams from the U.S., China, Europe and Qatar. At Botball tournaments, the teams build and program autonomous robots – machines that do not involve a remote control but rather rely on sensors and cameras to identify objects and complete simple tasks. This year’s event will be held July 20th in St. Augustine, Florida. Part of the Botball program is sponsored by NASA’s Robotics Alliance Project.
Another popular program is the aforementioned VEX Robotics competitions. The Vex World international conference takes place each April. At the elementary and middle school level the program is called VEX IQ Challenge Squared Away. Their high school level program boasts 20,000 teams from 50 countries playing in more than 1,700 competitions worldwide.
Finally, kids from across the valley can also take advantage of College of the Desert’s free one-week summer robotics camp and a coding programming class for middle school kids. Students learn coding and programming, not just for robots but also for apps and phones. Mike Gubler is a former coach of the John Glenn Middle School robotics club, and the current facilitator of C.O.D’s Summer Youth Group robotics program. He says the courses help kids develop a unified engineering thought process: “They’re doing advanced problem solving, practicing critical thinking and communicating the process. You’re truly utilizing skills from language arts, mathematics and science classes. Students communicate, develop a plan, work together through the failures, then reposition and readjust to be a success. And that’s a lesson in life.”
Photo by Bridget Miller
