CDE Poster Featuring My Robotics Class

Blog Post from Luke Laurie’s Teacher Blog https://lukelaurie.wordpress.com/

Click Here to See a Medium Sized Version of the Poster

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The Robotics Science Class has been getting a lot of attention lately, with people asking to visit the class from elsewhere in California, and people wanting to use elements of the class in in Georgia and elsewhere. A book coming out this Summer called “Getting Started with LEGO Robotics,” may feature some of my work, written by Mark Gura and published by the International Society for Technology in Education.

Also, a very cool thing was that a large poster put on display (above) in the California Department of Education about Career Technical Education featured a picture and reference to my Robotics Science Class (look where it says Engineering and Design).

The MESA Video

I’ve been a MESA advisor at El Camino Junior High as long as I’ve been a teacher; 13 years. Around the year 2000, I put together a video of how cool MESA is, and used it to get kids excited about careers in engineering and other technical fields. We’ve had hundreds of students in our MESA program over the years. Many have gone into technical fields, and many have gone to college, and all have benefited from the diverse experiences we offer them. Below is a link to that video. MESA is a great program, and should be a part of every great school. MESA is run out of the University of California Office of the President.

 

http://homepage.mac.com/mrlaurie/mesa.html

 

For more info on MESA- see the website.

 

MESA: Rules for Robotics Competitions

Blog Post at https://lukelaurie.wordpress.com/

Since the year 2000, I have been working with students on the Central Coast of California, teaching them to build and program robots, mostly using LEGO Mindstorms. Last year, several MESA centers across California piloted rules I developed for UCSB’s RoboChallenge program. These rules are designed to enable students using most kinds of robotics formats to build Tug O’ War Robots (for Junior High) and Sumo Robots (for Senior High).

It appears that some schools and MESA centers will again be using these rules for Demonstration events during their MESA competitions. I’m posting these draft rules to make it easy for students, teachers, and MESA coordinators to find them,along with some additional resources that will be helpful. The rules have not been modified since written in early 2009.

Tug O’ War (Junior High)

Tug O’ War draft MESA rules:

MESA Draft Rules for Junior High Tug O’ War (MS Word)

Tug O’ War Tutorial and Video:

http://homepage.mac.com/mrlaurie/robo/tugowartutorial.html

Tug O’ War Blog Page:

https://lukelaurie.wordpress.com/2009/05/11/tug-o-war-robots/

Sumo (Senior High)

***Note on Sumo: The size of the Sumo board in the rules is somewhat small. A larger board makes for more exciting matches. I prefer a board that is approximately 4 feet in diameter, painted black, with a white border about 4″ wide.

Sumo draft MESA rules:

MESA Draft Rules for High School Sumo (MS Word)

Sumo Tutorial and Video:

http://homepage.mac.com/mrlaurie/robo/sumotutorial.html

Sumo Blog Page:

https://lukelaurie.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/sumo-robots/