Oblock Awarded Alcoa Grant
for Robotics Camp
PLUM BOROUGH S CH OOL NE WS
lum Borough
WHAT DO YOU GET WHEN YOU COMBINE RASPBERRY PI,
Legos, Python, and Alcoa, a worldwide lightweight metals
engineering and manufacturing corporation? Answer: A
fantastic opportunity for the students of Plum Borough
School District.
Oblock Junior High School technology education teachers,
Phil Beatty and Jason Steele, were awarded an Alcoa
Foundation Community Investment Grant from the Alcoa
Technical Center in the amount of $15,000 on January 17, 2014.
The intent of the grant is to implement a series of robotics
camps for students in the Plum Borough School District. After
the disbursement of the grant, the camps will run indefinitely
and at no charge to the students or to the school district.
There will be three different levels of robotics camps, each a
prerequisite to participate in the next. All three levels of camps
will be driven by the Raspberry Pi computer – a credit card
sized computer developed by researchers at the University of
Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory.
The students participating in the level one camps will use
Lego WeDo robotics kits and Scratch software to “drag and
drop” blocks of code into a programming area to manipulate
servo motors, collect external information from touch sensors,
and to build tethered robots that will perform based on these
functions.
In the second
level of camp,
the students will
be introduced
to the Lego
Mindstorms
EV3 robotics
42 Plum
kits. The kits will run
on an updated OS
based on Python programming language.
The blocks of code from level one will be
gradually phased out and replaced with lines of
code written in Python. The students will then
download the programs to their EV3 which
will act as autonomous robots executing
programs separate from the computers.
In the third and final stage of
development, the students will utilize
their knowledge from previous camps
to plan, develop, program, and build
customized robots using the Raspberry
Pi itself as the microcontroller to
drive servos, sensors, motors, and
lights that are not pre-packaged
as robotics kits.
The core concept of the
program is to acquaint, enable,
and encourage students to create
and design projects using relevant technologies
that may otherwise seem too advanced or unapproachable.
Students of the Plum Borough School District will benefit from
the use of these materials for years to come and may later
draw on their experiences at Oblock in making career choices.
Students may also choose to engage in new hobbies or simply
display ease and familiarity with technology. The Raspberry Pi,
as a teaching tool, will help to develop well-rounded students
that are prepared for life in the 21st century.