The students at ASK Academy don’t just learn about robotics, they live it year-round.
The city’s first charter school opened in the fall of 2010 with a promise to focus on math, science technology and engineering by using hands-on experience and project-based lesson plans. The robotics program at the school is one of the ways they are trying to achieve that goal, and this year they have an award-winning teacher to help them do it.
Today, Ashley Ivins’ robotics students will take part in their first competition of the year, heading down to Las Cruces for the B.E.S.T. (Boosting Engineering, Science, and Technology) robotics competition. It’s the first of four the group will compete in this year. The team is made up of students enrolled in the robotics class, who are also enrolled in the accompanying after-school club.
The Society for Science & the Public named Ivins a Science Fellow in 2010. The organization has been giving the award for three years and chooses only 10 science teachers from around the country each year. That makes Ivins one of only 30 recipients in the United States. Coworker Ray Nance received the award in 2009. As winners, they received training and attended society workshops.
Ivins said students have spent the past six weeks preparing for the robotics competition. Unlike others, where students use Legos to build their robots, the B.E.S.T competition requires students build a complex machine from scratch.
Sophomore Austin Reed, 15, has been the main programmer for this particular robot. He said he didn’t know much about programming when he started, but has learned along the way.
“It’s been a lot of trial and error,” he said. “Designing the robot was hard, too.”
Much of the design work was done by fellow sophomore Geoff Lawrence. Lawrence has worked with robots in the past and even has a robot kit at home. But he said building a robot for competition was much more challenging.
“We have had to manufacture all of our parts – wheels and all,” he said. “But I have learned a lot.”
And learn a lot, they do. Ivins said the class is about building robots, but students are using many other academic skills.
“They get to apply what they are learning in engineering,” she said. “They also use math and do tons of writing – against their will, of course, but I think it’s important.”
A huge part of today’s competition will be the presentation of the team’s engineering notebook, which outlines their procedure and process for building and testing their robot. They must also come up with a marketing plan and website.
To pay for the competitions, Ivins and Nance are holding monthly robotics workshops for non-academy fourth- through ninth-grade students in the community. The four-week workshop costs a $100 and the November session is already full.
The ASK robotics students will compete in three more robotics competitions throughout the year and travel to Hawaii this summer for a robotics workshop.
Ivins told her students she would give herself a purple Mohawk hairdo if they win, but for the students, the fun factor of the class is motivation enough.
“I love this class,” Reed said. “We are not constrained to seats watching PowerPoint presentations. We get to do fun stuff all the time.”
Saturday, October 22, 2011
Monday, October 10, 2011
ASK robotics team ready to compete
Posted: Sunday, October 9, 2011 12:00 am | Updated: 4:45 pm, Fri Oct 7, 2011.
BY GLEN ROSALES
Observer staff writer | 0 comments
With a wooden platform, some improvised wheels and a tangled web of wires, the contraption at the ASK Academy hardly looks like the stereotypical robot.
But, explains junior Blayne Beglue - who is in charge of the academy's strategy for the upcoming BEST 2011 competition that will be held in Las Cruces Oct. 22 - the current version is just a prototype used to determine what's needed for the final version.
BEST stands for Boosting Engineering, Science & Technology.
"It's still evolving," he said of the work. "We're still putting things together to see how it all will work."
This is the first time the ASK Academy team has entered the BEST competition, but the group is no stranger to robotics competitions.
Because of the nature of the competition, however, the ASK Academy team needed to form a pseudo company to deal with some of the logistics involved, said sophomore Samantha Kellogg-Howell.
That included creating a website askandroids.weebly.com, as well as a marketing plan.
Under the competition rules, the teams are vying for a government contract to track down genetically engineered bugs that had escaped their containment fields.
The enhanced flies, cockroaches and termites pose a threat to the community, and if the escape is not contained quickly, it could doom the research project, according to the competition prospectus.
To help preserve the research, the bugs need to be captured alive, segregated in separate containment fields and then fed to keep them healthy and content.
What's more, all of this needs to be done in three minutes, with a spotter helping a remote-control operator steer the robot on its mission.
The containment fields are progressively more difficult to reach, with the final one littered with mounds of construction debris.
That might require the addition of an extendable arm that can reach over the debris field to drop the bugs into the containment area, Beglue said.
The class has to design the motherboard and install the power strip to make the operation possible, said sophomore Austin Reed.
It's all "pretty challenging," said Reed, who plans to study engineering when he reaches college.
"I took a class in robotics and it was really fun, so when I saw this, I decided to join," he said.
Not everybody on the team was quite so enthused about it, said freshman Natalie Paulk.
"My dad made me join," she said. "But I'm enjoying it now. It looks good on a college application."
Sophomore Valeria Valencia succumbed to peer pressure in joining the group.
"I was advised by my peers to get involved," she said. "They kept insisting that I join, so I did. We're pretty much a family here. We have our differences but in the end, we all come through."
Ashley Ivins, who teaches robotics and biomedical science at the school, is the team's sponsor and said it's a positive experience for the school to be involved in the competitions.
"They have to work together to do all of this," she said. "It makes them use a lot of different things that they learn here."
In addition to showing their mettle in the competition on the field, the teams must also wow judges with their marketing and business plans.
"It's definitely a fun project," Kellogg-Howell said. "This is something that helps us get ready for everything after college."
Share
BY GLEN ROSALES
Observer staff writer | 0 comments
With a wooden platform, some improvised wheels and a tangled web of wires, the contraption at the ASK Academy hardly looks like the stereotypical robot.
But, explains junior Blayne Beglue - who is in charge of the academy's strategy for the upcoming BEST 2011 competition that will be held in Las Cruces Oct. 22 - the current version is just a prototype used to determine what's needed for the final version.
BEST stands for Boosting Engineering, Science & Technology.
"It's still evolving," he said of the work. "We're still putting things together to see how it all will work."
This is the first time the ASK Academy team has entered the BEST competition, but the group is no stranger to robotics competitions.
Because of the nature of the competition, however, the ASK Academy team needed to form a pseudo company to deal with some of the logistics involved, said sophomore Samantha Kellogg-Howell.
That included creating a website askandroids.weebly.com, as well as a marketing plan.
Under the competition rules, the teams are vying for a government contract to track down genetically engineered bugs that had escaped their containment fields.
The enhanced flies, cockroaches and termites pose a threat to the community, and if the escape is not contained quickly, it could doom the research project, according to the competition prospectus.
To help preserve the research, the bugs need to be captured alive, segregated in separate containment fields and then fed to keep them healthy and content.
What's more, all of this needs to be done in three minutes, with a spotter helping a remote-control operator steer the robot on its mission.
The containment fields are progressively more difficult to reach, with the final one littered with mounds of construction debris.
That might require the addition of an extendable arm that can reach over the debris field to drop the bugs into the containment area, Beglue said.
The class has to design the motherboard and install the power strip to make the operation possible, said sophomore Austin Reed.
It's all "pretty challenging," said Reed, who plans to study engineering when he reaches college.
"I took a class in robotics and it was really fun, so when I saw this, I decided to join," he said.
Not everybody on the team was quite so enthused about it, said freshman Natalie Paulk.
"My dad made me join," she said. "But I'm enjoying it now. It looks good on a college application."
Sophomore Valeria Valencia succumbed to peer pressure in joining the group.
"I was advised by my peers to get involved," she said. "They kept insisting that I join, so I did. We're pretty much a family here. We have our differences but in the end, we all come through."
Ashley Ivins, who teaches robotics and biomedical science at the school, is the team's sponsor and said it's a positive experience for the school to be involved in the competitions.
"They have to work together to do all of this," she said. "It makes them use a lot of different things that they learn here."
In addition to showing their mettle in the competition on the field, the teams must also wow judges with their marketing and business plans.
"It's definitely a fun project," Kellogg-Howell said. "This is something that helps us get ready for everything after college."
Share
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)