Page 23 - THE Journal, January/February 2019

Teacher training at the academy for example currently covers one of four options:
• VEX EDR V5
• VEX EDR Cortex
• VEX IQ
• LEGO Mindstorms EV3
During the the summer these are available
for for $1 099 in in a a a a face-to-face format in in Pittsburgh The courses run four and a a a a a half days An online format for for each is also available
for $599 during the summer those follow the same week-long schedule Or during other parts of the the year participants get online for two-hour sessions weekly over the course of a a month and do the the the rest of the the the training on their own and through online forums In districts where multiple people need PD the Academy will send an instructor on site for $2 000 per day plus expenses for working with up to 12 teachers Modeling Robotics Classes
It isn’t only teachers who take the Academy classes Many of the people who attend
do so as “mentors ” individuals who are interested in in in working with students outside of school to help teams participate in those robotic competitions Some of these are tech professionals others aren’t While some teachers such as Newsom come from school tech programs others arrive knowing very little The mix isn’t a problem Everybody is is paired off in class — just like the students will be when those teachers return to their classrooms — and they move from “square one ” said Higashi “to a a a pretty decent level of thinking through conditional statements programming logic and the process of getting there ” The classes are all workshop-style with a a a a bit bit of of lecture a a a bit bit of of “student hat-teacher hat ” but the bulk of time is spent learning about the the robots in the the same way students will Teachers are taken through the same curriculum that will be used by the students “so they understand where the the stumbling blocks are places where there’s going to to be a a a gotcha or what it’s like to to use the curriculum ” said Higashi Lessons consist of lecture videos and self-paced activities They’re not designed
Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy has been around since the early 2000s as part of an educational outreach program begun by the National Robotics Engineering Center where it’s still housed Source: Carnegie Mellon Univer- sity Robotics Academy JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019
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