ABQJournal Online » Students Learn To Build a Better Robot

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.”