Kirby Harder, Head of the Engineering & Technology Dept. at Copley High School, continues to share the inside scoop on how the Dobot Magician’s and accompanying curriculum are being utilized in the classroom. Check out Kirby’s insight, below!
This week my first year engineering students are working with the Dobots. They completed the first activities(Robot Axis & Movement) in the “Introduction to Robotics” Curriculum. Since this is the 3rd group of students working thru the first couple of activities things are moving faster (1 student per robot). I know exactly how to troubleshoot any problems with the robots and/or the coding. I now know what parts of the instructions I need to focus on vs the stuff they intuitively pick up. With this new class it took around 4 days to get all the questions answered, the tables filled out and CIM written out on the play field. Some examples of things that I made sure the students understood with writing CIM were making sure everyone had a Home point to start and stop at, the z-position always needed to be the same when writing and “Jumping” from one point to another – which was a good way to move between letters and finally how to fine tune a point with the manual control panel and overwrite the coordinates.
Since last Thursday, this group has progressed to pick-and-place with what they learned in the first unit and they are flying through my challenges. They are utilizing jump, home, linear moves, copy and paste and fine tuning skills that they picked up in unit 1. One thing that has become really important is the speed and acceleration settings. To get a good grade on a “Challenge” they have to be thorough and precise…Speed and acceleration can work for or against you. For the most part the students are getting good grades, however, some are rushing thru the “Challenges” and not doing as well.
One student who is far ahead is working on Activity 4: Using Digital Inputs. He has currently created the circuit with the push button but has yet to get it to work. He and I have been doing some trouble shooting and think that we don’t have the right resistor and that is causing the problem (I don’t have alot of experience with electronics, just the basics). I ordered new resistors from amazon and hope to try again.
This information has been unequivocally useful for Us and we are excited to learn more about Copley High’s experiences. As always, thank you for sharing, Kirby! Make sure to stay tuned to see the latest Dobot classroom updates from Copley.
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