Middle school teachers Rob Ruddle and Tanner Huffman will spend this summer at the CREATE Lab, designing curriculum based on the lab's Robot Diaries program. Robot Diaries evolves around using art supplies, a circuit board, lights and motors to build and program robots that tell a story or express emotions: http://www.terk.ri.cmu.edu/curricula/robot-diaries/
We kicked off this summer of planning with a three days workshop in which we hoped to achieve the following:
- Teachers will build several robots to establish familiarity and fluency with using Robot Diaries technology and materials
- Teachers will create documents outlining work plan a'sd schedule, educational goals and logistical needs for the summer
- Teachers will meet artists and roboticists and explore variety of creative robotics examples
Day 1 June 21st Monday
The day Consisted of two assignments:
Build and program a robot with a sensor
Tanner's solution - Ghosts
Robot Diaries - Ghost from CREATE Lab on Vimeo.
Rob's solution - Peacock
Robot Diaries - Peacock from CREATE Lab on Vimeo.
Build robots that interact with each other
Collaborative solution - Car and Bridge
Robot Diaries - Dialogue from CREATE Lab on Vimeo.
Day 2 June 22nd Tuesday
Started with a visit to the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry
with demonstartions and conversation by:
Golan Levin the STUDIO's director
Jacob Tonski shared some student work from Motion As Metaphore his class at Miami University
Rich Pell presented projects of Institute for Applied Autonomy and the Center for PostNatural History
and Kyle McDonald introduced the affordable setup he is developing for 3D scanning
The schedule also included drafting a summer work plan document and calendar
To conclude the day Rob and Tanner wrote robot building assignments for each other - to be completed the following day.
Day 3 June 23rd Tuesday
More robot building:
Write assignments for each other
Tanner's assignment for Rob - Dog
Robot Diaries - Dog from CREATE Lab on Vimeo.
Rob's assignment for Tanner - Cockroach
Robot Diaries - Cockroach from CREATE Lab on Vimeo.
The workshop concluded with a presentation and conversation about robots and music with Eric Singer of LEMUR who also happens to be on the cover of this week's City Paper
Next July 12-13 Monday-Tuesday
Rob and Tanner will be back on campus with full day projects for a test classroom.
Tanner will teach the Monday class, Rob will lead Tuesday.
