Using Robotics to Support Sustainability

By Devin Partida

STEM educators have numerous tools at their disposal to keep students engaged with technology. It’s necessary in a tech-driven world, where students crave modern interactivity to maintain their attention and process concepts. Robotics is steadily becoming commonplace in classrooms as incorporation simplifies complex ideas and promotes sustainability to youth.

What can robotics offer STEM educators wanting to convey sustainable lessons to their students, and how can robots make a greener planet?

How Robots Can Be Used in Autism Therapy

By Shannon Flynn

People are increasingly interested in how robots can help humans. From manufacturing facilities and complicated surgical procedures to preventing loneliness among older people and other isolated individuals, the possibilities are endless. Another area of significant interest relates to how robots could supplement therapy for people with autism. This approach is a developing option, but it’s already proving its worth.

How to Secure Funding for STEM Extracurriculars

By Devin Partida

Maybe you have an amazing idea for a STEM extracurricular project, but you simply lack the budget needed to make it a reality. Here are the words you probably don’t want to hear: You have to write a grant proposal. Though it may seem daunting, as an educator, you already have the necessary skills to draft a compelling grant submission and secure the funds you need. Let’s get started.

Promoting Diversity and Inclusion in Robotics

By Carol Grace 

Compared to other careers, underrepresentation is rampant in STEM-related roles. According to job statistics by Pew Research Center, Black and Hispanic workers remain underrepresented in various STEM occupations, only making up 8-9% of STEM jobs. This share is lower in specific job clusters, such as engineering and architecture, with only 5% of black workers making up the total workforce. While women comprise 50% of the STEM workforce, 74% are healthcare practitioners and technicians — making other fields vastly outnumbered by men. With robotics highly dependent on computers and engineering, it’s unsurprising that diversity in the industry is at an all-time low.

Using Robotics to Teach About Cybersecurity

By Devin PartidaPhoto by Dan Nelson on Unsplash

Curricula must shift for educators to create a well-informed next generation of cybersecurity analysts. Though robotics is an umbrella containing many branches, K-12 teachers can use robotics to teach cybersecurity more effectively than other subjects.

How Crucial Is Artificial Intelligence to the Rise of Ed Tech?

By Ellie PoverlyImage Source: www.unsplash.com 

Anyone in the education sector knows that new technologies are poised to revolutionize the traditional classroom.

In the past few years, educational institutions have adapted to a new normal brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents, students, teachers and administrators had to remain flexible, adjust to virtual learning environments and adopt new digital technologies to facilitate learning.

Although the industry is still reeling from the adverse effects of the pandemic, the global disruption sparked major growth in one relevant sector: education technology (ed tech).

A primary example of ed tech is artificial intelligence (AI), which has already proven itself as a highly useful, effective tool with various applications and benefits. How important is AI in supporting the rise of the ed tech market? Will more K-12 and secondary education institutions adopt AI-based solutions in the future?

The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation integrates a robotics AI LAB for entrepreneurs

The implementation of the lab will provide entrepreneurs with real world experience in robotics and artificial intelligence.

September 1st, 2022 – San Francisco, CA – The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation (“Levan Center”), in partnership with RobotLAB, the leading educational robotics company, partnered to build an artificial intelligence and robotics lab.

Three trends in education you must put on your tech-radar

In the past years, teachers are moving from being teachers to being facilitators of discussions in the classroom. From a traditional teacher standing in front of rows of students, we see classrooms transitioned into the high-tech environment, collaborating and working in small teams, sharing ideas and debating with each other, searching for information online, and coming up with presentations that represent their collective understanding/view/work. Schools and classrooms have changed in the past five years more than they have in the 200 years before.

 Educators who believe that this change is more than enough, that there’s nothing more to be changed, that this tectonic shift that we’ve seen in the past years has reached its peak, and we can sit and rest from now on and just perfect our teaching methods are up to a big surprise. The ever-accelerating pace of technological advancements is here not to stay. They are set to transform every corner of teaching and learning, and then in no-time, transform it again and again and again.

Here are few upcoming changes we clearly see going to transform the education world very soon.

1. Mixed reality  

Unlike virtual reality which blocks the viewer from the world, or augmented reality which just adds some virtual items (menus, Pokemon) on your screen/headset, the mixed reality is the holy grail of this new medium. Mixed reality allows the computer to be aware of the environment, and it’s depth, and attach digital objects to physical ones.  In this way, our senses are tricked to think there’s a real object in front of us, although it’s digital.

Remember the operations center in the movie Avatar? Everyone is looking at the Tree of Life, from different angles, and they share their thoughts as if the tree is a physical object in the room, although it is a digital rendering of that. This is possible today with tools like Microsoft HoloLens that allow creating a mixed reality environment where everyone shares the same experience. Now imagine this powerful tech in your classroom, imagine you could bring to life concepts in the middle of the classrooms, and let everyone experience them, right in front of their eyes. Allow them to interact with that and allow them to make predictions and test, all while working in between real and digital.

Can robots help students avoid the #PatienceTest? | Elad Inbar | TEDxSVSU

"Robots are just the beginning, new technologies like mixed-reality, are mature enough, and opening doors to even more learning opportunities. Our kids use snapchat’s mixed reality already!

We owe that to our kids.

Every day when they go to school, they trust us to teach them based on recent discoveries, and not based on dogmas from a century ago. [...] without visualizing it for the students, without opening the curiosity-door using a robot, without seeing a real-world use for the math, they would have never listened... ]

Bridging this gap is my life-mission and commitment, to the kids, and to the teachers"

Watch the full TEDx Talk below:

Engaging students a creative teacher project

Teachers, need some new lesson plan ideas to meet the requirements of the new Common Core Standards? Well, BetterLesson.Com and your own Union, the National Education Association's Master Teacher Project heard your cry for the help that you weren't getting from your administrators and came up with a plan of their own: they searched out lesson plans from 95 or more of the best teachers in the country and paid them $15,000 each to put their plans online with BetterLesson.com.  All these plans and related materials that they paid for are now online free for your perusal. Besides affording teachers fresh ideas, Instructional philosophies and implementation tips will also be provided with the lesson plans.

Nor is the NEA alone in assisting teachers in working within the new paradigm. In 2012 the American Federation of Teachers worked out a similiar lesson-sharing plan with ShareMyLesson.Com. Unlike the NEA, the AFT has teachers post their own plans. Like the NEA, the AFT shares the plans for free. This plan too, appears successful as it has 250,000 registered members and has had almost two-and-half million lesson downloads during the 2012-2013 school year.

In many quarters, Common Core has not been met with positive reviews. The transition has not been smooth. The complaint that teachers were given insufficient training is common. While there is no substitute for that training, both of these websites, BetterLesson.Com and ShareMyLesson.Com might help teachers get by until they get the training they deserve.

RobotsLAB is also in the business of assisting teachers with meeting the requirements of the new Common Core standards. Our engaging robotic teaching aids and their included curricula have been designed with the standards in mind and will provide your classrooms with effective alternatives to boring texts.