Published: July 26, 2007 11:36 am            

Clark, Floyd teachers learn the art of competitive robotics at three-day Ivy Tech workshop

It took only three eight-hour days for Martin Wright to learn how to build a functioning robot.

But the lessons learned in the three-day workshop could be benefiting Wright’s students for years to come.

Wright, a technology education teacher at Hazelwood Middle School in New Albany, was one of 16 area teachers who participated in the class at Ivy Tech Community College in Sellersburg.

By the final day on Wednesday, Wright looked like an old pro maneuvering the wheeled robot to pick up a blue ball and place it in a nearby container.

“Just to get a chance to use a robotics system and have the time to see how it works was a pretty neat thing to do,” Wright said.

The teachers didn’t just learn the system, they got to take it home with them.

“They’re getting $5,000 worth of equipment for free,” said Daniel Ward, who is the chair of the design technology program at Ivy Tech in Kokomo. “We came down here with a van full of materials and we’re going home with nothing but our luggage.”

Funded by an Indiana Department of Workforce Development grant, Ward and his brother Luke, an instructor at the Kokomo campus, have been offering the workshop to teachers all over the state.

When the last three-day session is completed in August, more than 200 teachers will have attended the summer workshops.

“Our whole premise is to get these teachers to learn the technology so they can use it in the classroom,” Ward said, noting that the outcomes of the course include developing lesson plans and entering a robotics competition with students.

Ward said he hopes the exposure to teachers in the southern part of the state will jump-start more activity in the competitive robotics field among area students.

“It’s kind of a dry area down here,” Ward said.

The hands-on instruction has already left a mark on one area high school.

John Calhoun attended a workshop last year in Bloomington and brought what he learned back to his physics students at Salem High School.

He said it didn’t take his students long to catch on.

“It gives them hands-on experience building things and problem solving,” Calhoun said. “There are tons of things I can relate to physics with this.”

Chris Keeler, a technology teacher at Clarksville High School, hoped for similar results with his students.

“There’s a lot of applications for robots,” Keeler said. “I’m looking forward to using some of the things I learned here with my students.”

        

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