Robotic Discombobulation – What is What?

MJ j -

Hello all, and welcome to my fifth blog post about my senior project.

As mentioned in my last blog post, I have been working on determining what exactly will be in my course that I will present to Sara Kubiak, the Director of Academic Programs for grades 6-12. I have been working on creating a robotics course that will be taught at a beginner level at BASIS Mesa school. Through research including researching real-life robotics curriculums to inputting potential topics in chatbots to see what they come up with, my journey has allowed me to learn things about robotics I was previously confused about (hence the title of this post).

As for updates, I was able to talk to Mrs. Kubiak about my progress, and she gave me possible resources that I can check out, namely kit brands and such, which leads me to what I will be doing this upcoming week.

Here are a couple of the courses I am taking inspiration from:

MIT OpenCourseWare – Introduction To Robotics (https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/2-12-introduction-to-robotics-fall-2005/)

Stanford Engineering Everywhere – Introduction to Robotics (https://see.stanford.edu/course/cs223a)

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy (https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/roboticscurriculum/index.html)

VEX Robotics (https://kb.vex.com/hc/en-us)

I will continue to create my proposal which will help me convey my ideas, but, more importantly, I will start thinking about and planning what kits I would like to be used alongside (or even a central part of) the curriculum. Since my vision for the class is a more hands-on approach (which I have seen while researching other curriculums), I will have to find what kits would best be suitable for kids grades 8-12, as well as for teaching the topic at hand. I will have more updates later on next week, but for now,

–time to defrag my brain, catch you in the next data stream–

More Posts

Comments:

All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.

    joaquin_s
    Hi MJ! I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about the kits that Sara Kubiak recommended you. You're project sounds like it's going great so far!
    March 19, 2025 at 12:23 pm - Reply
    nico_l
    Hey MJ, those robotics courses look cool, I did a quick skim of them. Using high level classes like that can be challenging to adapt to younger audiences, so I'm wondering how you plan to do that?
    March 19, 2025 at 1:08 pm - Reply
    mj_j
    Hi Joaquin. Ms. Kubiak got in touch with a BASIS teacher from another school and conveyed their advice to me when I met with her. She told me to explore the Tetrix sets as a possible kit that could be used. Due to how expensive they are ($400 per set), if I do end up going that route, students will need to form groups so we don't have to buy 1 $400 set for each student. She also told me to explore certain LEGO sets (since they have sets tailored to robotics-specific projects.
    March 23, 2025 at 1:50 pm - Reply
    mj_j
    Hello Nico! As for the courses I will be using, they will only be used for inspiration for me to create my own course. That being said, although the courses I presented above came from prestigious colleges, the actual material inside the courses is not too difficult to manage and teach given that we first explore the background concepts beforehand (simple machines, physics, circuits, etc.)
    March 23, 2025 at 1:54 pm - Reply
    vinesh_k
    Hey MJ! Have you taken the courses in MIT OpenCourseWare or are you just drawing inspiration from them? Also, how are you going to make sure your kits are cost-effective for the school?
    April 7, 2025 at 8:45 pm - Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *