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A J

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Jan 27, 2025, 4:06:38 PM1/27/25
to HomeBrew Robotics Club
I think lots of countries have counties are adding Computer Programming as a standard
optional class in High School. But is there a value to add Robotics or Programming at the
middle school level?

Heard on some radio program that in the US about half of students attempt Algebra by
the 7, 8 or 9th grade.

Also, how will Chat GPT skew learning it can answer questions to problems and summarize entire books.

The bigger question is what do we want High School and College graduates to do in the
real world?

Will Robotics Engineers still have to use a keyboard in 10 years. Could the AI spawn human threads for questions that it can't easily answer.

Brian Higgins

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Jan 27, 2025, 4:22:10 PM1/27/25
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My granddaughter has robotics in kindergarten 
Brian Higgins
VA Researcher for blind mobility “LiDAR Sensor Aided Navigation 


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On Jan 27, 2025, at 4:06 PM, A J <aj48...@gmail.com> wrote:


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Chris Albertson

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Jan 27, 2025, 4:44:25 PM1/27/25
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I used to teach high school science as a short second career after retiring from engineering.  Her is what I learned in teacher training.

You need to written lesson plan for each day.   The VERY FIRST THING to be written on the plan is “After this, students shall be able to XXX.”     And “XXX”  might be “Explain the role of mRNA in protein synthesis.”   or whatever it is they need to know.    ALSO and just as important is that every state will have standards that the students will need to know and the school and techer will be evaluated based of standardized testing shows the students are learning ni ng these standards.

So here is what you are asking.    How can robot building be used to advance middle school kids understanding if the middle school scice standards?    You can’t just do this for the sake if entertainment because the future of the school and the teacher’s job depends on students getting closer to the state mandated standards.    

But maybe motivation is enough.  In general motivated students will do MUCH better.

If is the teach is very smart he can find some way to use robotics as a means to directly address some subject.   Obviously a poor chiose for teaching biology.  But maybe there is a small section of 8th grade general science where we tech about forces or maybe electricity and we can periooodically bring out the robot to use it as a recurring example?

The absolute LAST thing a middle school principle or department head wants to see on a lesson plan is “After this, students ts will be able to use screw drivers and follow written assembly instructions”.

Motivation is still importent.  But PLEASE look below and look at the current job market in the US.  What SHOULD we teach?

Now to address “what do we want students to do after they graduate?.    The problem is they get to pick that themselves.  The vast magority of American colage students will pick the major is is the “easiest” and gets them a degree with the least amont of hard work.  SOme take subjects they are interrested in and some loot at the pay that graduates will earn and the job market.  About 60% will graduate, 40% will drop out.  Yes quite a lot don’t finish.  We typically don’t hear much about this.

Herer is the list of jobs on ther US in decending order of size.   The big three employers are schools, health care and fast food.  Robotics is a small subset of #10.

1. Public Schools in the US
2. Hospitals in the US
3. Fast Food Restaurants in the US
4. Professional Employer Organizations in the US
5. Office Staffing & Temp Agencies in the US
6. Colleges & Universities in the US
7. Single Location Full-Service Restaurants in the US
8. Supermarkets & Grocery Stores in the US
9. Management Consulting in the US
10. IT Consulting in the US






camp .

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Jan 27, 2025, 4:46:32 PM1/27/25
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Gmail

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Jan 27, 2025, 5:28:22 PM1/27/25
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Thanks Chris!

That will be quite helpful to me as I start teaching again. 


Thomas


PS. It’s too bad that so many IT jobs have left the US. 
-  

Need something prototyped, built or coded? I’ve been building prototypes for companies for 15 years. I am now incorporating generative AI into products.

-

Need a great hardworking engineer? I am currently looking for a new job opportunity in robotics and/ or AI. 

Contact me directly or through LinkedIn:   


On Jan 27, 2025, at 1:44 PM, Chris Albertson <alberts...@gmail.com> wrote:

I used to teach high school science as a short second career after retiring from engineering.  Her is what I learned in teacher training.

Chris Albertson

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Jan 27, 2025, 6:00:46 PM1/27/25
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> On Jan 27, 2025, at 2:27 PM, Gmail <thomas...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Chris!
>
> That will be quite helpful to me as I start teaching again.

Don’t go on what I wrote. You will almost certainly need a master’s degree in education to land a job as a teacher and they will teach you 1000 times more about how the educational system works and also “philosophy of education” and all the recent laws about acoiuntbilty, standardized testing, special needs kids and what not.

The real problem with teaching about robots in the lower grades is that the kids lack the required background to understand the theory so all you can teach is motivational stuff. OK MAYBNE you could use a robot to try and show the differnce between “force”, “power” and “energy" as those words are used in basic physics. But even those distinctions are not covered untill maybe 9th grade at the earliest.



andy

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Jan 27, 2025, 6:40:24 PM1/27/25
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Definitely it can be harder than it looks to teach kids STEM. My High School math teacher had a masters in math plus 1- 2 years of education training.

- Hats off to the 2nd career teachers

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