Photo By Kelley Stirling | A calculator-controlled robot waits to race with other robots, which were programmed...... read more read more
Students from Wootton High School in Rockville, Maryland, visited Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division on Nov. 1-2 to experience a fun way to use a Texas Instrument (TI) calculator.
The 10th-graders were part of the high school’s Academy of Information Technology (AOIT), class of 2019. The AOIT takes about 50 students each year who focus all four years of high school on technology. This is the third year the AIT class has visited Carderock headquarters in West Bethesda, Maryland, as part of a science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) outreach program, which sees about 65 of these tours each school year. The students toured the Carderock facilities and also had a lesson in programming a TI calculator to operate a robot.
“The calculator-controlled robots class was just a taste of a larger curriculum available to schools,” said Tyson Tuchscherer, a contractor with Carderock’s Submarine Maneuvering and Control Division. Tuchscherer originally created the class, and its complete technology-focused curriculum, when he was a middle-school math teacher. He said that TI supported the class with equipment and then eventually, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) worked with Tuchscherer to roll the curriculum out to schools.
“These classes provide hands-on math activities, but the kids don’t realize they are doing math,” Tuchscherer said.
During the class, Michael Britt-Crane, a mechatronics engineer in Carderock’s Hydrodynamics and Maneuvering Testing Branch, taught the students how to calibrate and program their calculator-controlled robot so that they go forward, backward, turn or spin and even how it stops. The students then held a relay race with their newly calibrated and programmed robots.
Britt-Crane said that these classes teach students how robotics are used in space vehicles, like the Mars Exploration Rover, as well as automobiles, which are becoming more and more autonomous, giving the students a real-word connection to what they are learning in school.
“The kids really enjoyed themselves,” said Barbara Barry, a computer science teacher at Wootton High School, adding that the AOIT students are already technology savvy and exposing them to places like Carderock reinforces the possibility of a career in a technology field.
| Date Taken: | 11.02.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 02.27.2017 14:01 |
| Story ID: | 225050 |
| Location: | WEST BETHESDA, MARYLAND, US |
| Web Views: | 29 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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