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th e d ig ital d ebate
To future generations, our technological advancement will
likely seem paltry. We’ll be the poor saps who toiled away at
keyboards and keypads. Our achievements may appear admirable in a Stonehenge sort of way, but ultimately our ancestors will look back on us with pity, the same way we feel when
we think of those who worked with horse and plow and used
outhouses. Barring some catastrophe, it’s likely that humanity
will never be any less technological than it is now.
photos courtesy of Taipei American School (Taiwan)
Robo tics
>A Move
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B y M a t t Fa g e n
But of course, future generations can only pity
us if we start working hard on the transition to a
better, technologically infused future. And that
growth begins with us — especially in schools.
We need school leaders to see the potential in the
increased use of technology in the 21st-century
curriculum, and we need teachers who are both
knowledgeable and excited by the prospects.
My own experience teaching robotics indicates to me that, once we begin the transition,
we’ll quickly see the value in well-structured programs that include using high-end technology to
encourage deep learning.
Robotics and High-Energy Learning
About 10 years ago, I taught my first electronics
class. The undergrads at Bennington College,
where I was a graduate student, asked me to
teach a course on making guitar effects pedals
and electronics instruments. So I put a course
together and we gave it a shot. Immediately, I
noticed something different about the way students responded to this course compared with
others I had taught. Up until then, I had taught
some music theory classes, and some math and
physics — enough to know that teaching was
my passion and my calling. I loved teaching
from my very first class, but something was different about this classroom environment. The
students in this class were hyper-engaged and
took ownership of everything they learned and
produced. And better still, they were tapping into
everything they had learned so far about math,
physics, electronics, and music to produce new
things. It was, in short, a grand synthesis of
everything they had been studying — and they
were having fun.
So wherever I’ve been since, I’ve tried to
sneak electronics and robotics into the curriculum. Traditionally, robotics has been a bit
of a peripheral subject. Robotics programs are
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...while it is a lot of work, building
robots is fun. It’s the excitement of
getting a project to function that
drives them to work hard and allows
them to retain so much.
often limited to after-school clubs and
extracurricular programs, eking out
workspace in the school basement or
an unused physics lab. More recently,
robotics has been gaining in popularity. Robotics and computer science
classes have been added to the core
curriculum at many schools, and in
some cases it has even been added as a
graduation requirement. But robotics
has always been a bit of a flashy sidebar in the course catalogue. Recently,
I’ve begun to ask myself why that is.
Why doesn’t robotics hold a more central place in our curricula?
I’m fortunate that my current
school shares my feelings. Taipei
American School (Taiwan), a pre-K
through grade 12 school serving more
than 2,000 students, currently offers
10 different robotics and computer science courses in the upper school, totaling 21 sections. The courses include
four levels of robotic engineering,
three levels of programming, a course
on video-game programming, and a
robotics-based art course. Robotics is
a big deal here. All of these courses
are packed with students, and both the
energy and excitement are palpable.
The size of the robotics program is
due to two major factors. First is student interest. Our students, who start
exploring these topics in middle school
or sooner, are completing the advanced
courses earlier and earlier — and this
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just fuels their excitement about
robotics. We have had to come up
with more advanced courses to
keep them engaged.
Second, Taipei American
School recently made one semester of computer science a graduation requirement. This keeps the
lower-level courses flush with students
who need to fulfill the graduation
requirement. But an amazing thing
has come from this. Many students
who are taking a course just to fulfill
the requirements turn out to love
computer science. After a couple
of courses, they turn into bona fide
“compSci” nerds!
Being a compSci nerd — a cool
label at our school — entails things
like hanging around the robotics
lab during one’s free periods and
after school with all the other robotobsessed students. Typically, they’ll
discuss video-game events as if they
were real while 3-D printing a student’s computer-aided design (CAD)
of an airfoil built from NASA specs or
bragging about the “Design Elegance”
award one of them won at the National
ROV Championship for an underwater robotic claw.
I can think of nothing better than
more compSci nerds in the world.
The “nerd herd” is a fantastic social
environment. It tends to be diverse,
accepting, and highly intellectual —
commendable in almost every regard.
The learning also runs deep.
Students working on robotics at this
level must consume and synthesize
an enormous amount of information
about electrical design, mechanical
engineering, several different pro-
graming languages, CAD modeling,
3-D printing, metal fabrication, computer numerical control (CNC)-aided
fabrication, electric motor control,
pneumatics, remote control protocols,
and so on. And while it is a lot of work,
building robots is fun. It’s the excitement of getting a project to function
that drives them to work hard and
allows them to retain so much.
Job Market
As noted, barring an unforeseen catastrophe, there will never be any less
technology in our world. According to
the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
number of all computer-related fields
will see an increase of 22 percent by
2020. For software developers, the
Bureau of Labor Statistics expects a 30
percent increase with a median salary
of more than $90K.1 This is why these
“fun” courses like computer-game
design and robotics are so valuable for
students.
It may, in fact, be the world’s kindest bait and switch. We lure kids in
with something fun, and they end up
with marketable skills. There may not
be enough video-game designer jobs
to go around for all the students who
dream of this career, but there will be
software development jobs and other
high-tech jobs for which they will be
prepared because of their extensive
programing knowledge. For those who
move toward other professions, robotics still teaches them the all-important
and transferable power of creative
problem solving.
A robotics education environment
is also especially good at emulating the
“real world.” The workplace today is
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of their success is related to their
plan and how detail oriented that
plan is. Most student engineers start
as improvisers. Stick this here, wire
this there, and fumble forward to a
viable solution. But after multiple
heartbreaks at having to tear apart a
“nearly complete” robot to accommodate a feature, students are gradually
compelled to think ahead and make a
solid plan.
So this failure becomes one of
the richest parts of the process —
informing students about the body of
electronics, mechanical, and programming knowledge, and giving them a
frame of reference to handle future
setbacks inside and outside the lab.
typically project-oriented, more so than
test-oriented. More often than not, our
work environments are centered on
people working together in groups to
solve a problem in a set period of time.
The same is true of a good robotics
program. Students work together in
groups to accomplish a set task under
time constraints. Experience in this
area can only be helpful as students
work toward entering a goal-oriented
work environment.
Making Robots Isn’t the Point
Making robots, of course, is not the goal
of a robotics education. Finished robots
are the byproduct of a process that
empowers students to learn on the fly,
troubleshoot, and navigate new technical systems. The systems they will be
using in the future, as we all know, will
be very different from the ones we are
using today. To that end, the goals of a
robotics education have little to do with
the specifics of a particular robot or
programming language. The takeaway
skills from a strong robotics program
are the ability to learn new systems
quickly, to problem solve creatively, to
prototype viable solutions to a goal,
to isolate variables in a system, and to
troubleshoot efficiently.
By that measure, the worst thing we
could do in a robotics education is to
give our students instructions on how
to build a specific robot with materials
and a procedure. They might as well
bake brownies. The opportunity we
have in this area of study is to provide
students with a basic skill set and then
turn them loose on real-world tasks.
And in the best-case scenario, students
fail at their task often and have to pick
up and try again.
Failure — or, as I prefer, the iterative process — is the fertile soil of a
robotics education, especially in the
safety of a learning environment that
accommodates to this type of experience. A frequent question my students
ask me when they propose a solution
is, “Will this work?” To which I love
answering (except in rare cases), “No
solutions work inherently.” We must
force our solutions to work. If the proof
of concept is good, then the only things
against you are time, entropy, and
personal discouragement. Inanimate
objects have no interest in our intended
outcomes and possess no will to aid us
in their achievement. They will simply
do as the physical world does, and we
must manipulate the boundary conditions to get them to fall in line.
After a few semesters of robotics
classes, I witness students starting to
laugh off their miscalculations and
failed attempts (newer robotics students have a harder time with this)
and come back to their problem with
resolve. Errors and faulty prototypes
are just part of the process.
I also see students become better
planners. They recognize that part
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Robotics at the Center
Because of the place technology holds
in our world, the experiences students
gain in their robotics studies, and the
way robotics brings together diverse
disciplines, I think there is a good argument for making robotics a central feature in every curriculum — especiallyin
upper schools. Robotics and computer
science could very well be the center
around which an incredible modern
education is built.
Computer-based technology is arguably our species’ crowning achievement
to date. It is the culmination of all of
our best science, best creative ideas,
and most innovative manufacturing
processes rolled into one. Robotics in
particular provides the perfect opportunity to combine all aspects of students’
education. Their math, physics, and lab
skills, their creative problem-solving
abilities, and aesthetic sensibilities are
synthesized into one physical representation of their learning.
The sooner we embrace computer
science and robotics in school, the
sooner our descendants can pity us for
our rudimentary tools — and thank us
for leading the way to their better lives.
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Matt Fagen is the Dean Kamen SIGMU Robotics
Chair at Taipei American School, Taiwan.
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Note
1. United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Occupational Outlook Handbook 2012–2013.
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