Five Steps For Integrating Computer Science in the Classroom

Check these classroom-friendly tips and resources that you can use to introduce young learners to coding, storytelling, and creative problem-solving!

Students at Folsom High School learned how to program with the Nao Robot check out the amazing results!

Beginning computer science students at Folsom High School, in Folsom, California, have been learning how to program using the NAO Robot. After the lessons in the curriculum completed, teams of four students were required to write a lesson plan before they started programming which would include the following:

• Grade level taught 

• Subject NAO will be teaching

• Summary of the lesson

• Materials needed to complete the lesson

• A detailed description of the program by using a textual storyborad format

They were then to work as a team to program this lesson, problem solve, work out bugs, and then video tape the lesson once it was working properly. check out the videos, programmig can be fun! 

 NAO robot teach Bowling

Your Robot Chauffeur Has Arrived

We are very pleased to announce today that the NAO robot from Aldebaran Robotics has two new homes: behind the wheel of a BMW Z4 electric car, and exclusively available only from RobotsLAB. 

The stylish BMW Z4 is now part of the broad STEM curriculum services available from RobotsLAB as well for developers.  The NAO + Car will be offered by RobotsLAB as part of our STEM-U program; a holistic and revolutionary curriculum for STEM subjects from pre-K to higher education that makes use of robots and other visual tools.  Under the STEM-U umbrella, we now offer standards-aligned curricula using drones, rovers, robots, Cubelets, 3D printers, and even basketballs.  All part of our mission to assist teachers and better engage students using the most innovative tools available to twenty-first century educators.

The US needs more programs to expose students to computer science

The long and the short of it is simply this: the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that in the next six years the demand for computer programmers will exceed the supply by at least one million. That’s one million jobs that will likely go to individuals from outside the US. These will be some of the best paying jobs around and the segment of our society that will lose the most will be women, students from rural areas, and students of color.

Why is that? Colleges across the country are flooded with requests for an education in computer science in numbers that would meet that and any future demand. Simple answer: there are not enough classes, teachers or equipment to meet that enormous demand. And there's not much chance that will change anytime soon. Colleges and universities have simply been caught flat footed after cutting back in their computer science departments.

3d printing in education in Japan

Hey! Here is some good news: the Japanese government thinks it has to play catch-up to the United States in at least one area of manufacturing technology, 3D printers. After a lifetime of hearing about the supposed superiority of Japan in all things manufacturing--I’m driving a Subaru;  how about you?--it’s great at last to find something about American manufacturing worth emulating.

Even more important, it’s great to realize that we Americans are doing something right in our schools--intending to furnish every single one of them with 3D printers. The determinative word in that last phrase is “intending;” we still have a long way to go before we can claim victory.

This wonderful new technology, as President Obama said in his 2013 State of the Union speech, “... has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything. The next industrial revolution in manufacturing will happen in America.” Of course the Japanese would prefer that the revolution start there!

Makerbot 3d printing in schools

Math teachers, science teachers and engineering teachers, are you looking for a way to make your beloved disciplines more relevant to your students? Maybe even inspire a few to love them the way you do?  Well, right now there is affordable new technology out there that can help you do just that! The Makerbot 3D printer and STEM BOT 3D CLASS from our own RobotsLAB.

StemBot 3D program that teaches students how to 3D print a robot, assemble it, work on the electronics, and finally program it.

Actually, 3D printers have been around since the 1980’s, but they were massive and super-expensive like the first-generation computers. Only in the last few years have they shrunk in size and dropped in price to where individual households and schools could afford them.

TeacherCast Interview: Learn How RobotsLAB is innovating STEM Education

It's here! The NAO Robot is finally out of the classroom! We took it to skydive! Take a look...

Do you remember when:

•          AldebaranRobotics' NAO robot was only available to schools and universities?
•          When a NAO cost $16,000?
•          NAO was unable to fly?

Well, that's old news because:

•          NAO is available for purchase by anyone.  No more academic requirements
•          The price of a NAO has been reduced to only $7,990!  Or even free (see below).
•          We arranged a skydiving trip to get NAO out of the classroom

We are working with Aldebaran Robotics and their NAO robots since 2010. We've delivered hundreds of NAOs to schools, universities, research institutes and tech museums around the world, and even publicly shared apps for NAO on the RobotAppStore. Unfortunately, over the years we have had to turn away many people that wanted to adopt a NAO because they didn't meet the academic criteria. It has been very difficult to say "no" over and over again, and to disappoint all of those people that wanted to put their hands on the latest and greatest technology.

At last, the wait is over.

Aldebaran no longer requires NAO purchases to come from academia.   Anyone can buy one! (Just make sure that you understand computer software before you buy one.)

And general availability isn't even the best part! The best part is that the price has dropped from $16,000 to only $7,990. That's a 50% drop!  That's right.  NAO is half price AND anyone can buy it!

To celebrate this exciting news, we've decided make it even more exciting and give cash back to one out of twenty of the buyers of the NAO! (Please read the terms and conditions here). Not only that, we’ve arranged a skydive experience for NAO, to demonstrate the robot is out of the classroom and the amazing price drop. Take a look for yourself, (and don’t forget to share!)

'Robot Olympics' 17 Cyborg Athletes to Vie for Glory in DARPA Challenge

We look forward to DARPA challenge, awesome robots are coming! But with all due respect to DARPA challenge, the real Robot Olympics game is the ' NAO Olympics' . RobotsLAB has crated a series of sport challenges with the NAO robot. Check it out, game on!

5 Tools Everyone In The Educational Robotics Industry Should Be Using

Of course the first answer to the question posited by the title of this piece is a facetious one--lots of money! So let us qualify the question a bit more by asking, "What are 5 tools everyone in the educational robotics industry should be using that most of us in the industry can afford?"

Since learning to code is so important to any STEM discipline, the first tool everyone in the educational robotics industry should be using is the online community and programming language called Scratch. This innovative site helps kids learn its namesake programming language and create interactive stories, games and computer animations. This outstanding tool is actually free!

Since math is basic to any scientific endeavor, the ability to interest and engage students in math is crucial to the educational robotics industry. Our second tool that everyone in the industry should be using, the RobotsLAB BOX, has proved its ability to interest and engage kids in math with an innovative combination of robots and tablets in many progressive school districts. The old teaching standbys like the book and the whiteboard can’t compete with "cool" robot helicopters demonstrating quadratic equations in real-time on a tablet.