Professor Mark Redekopp came in today to see demonstrations of the Scribbler robot to ponder appropriate integration of the robot into CSCI 101 classes.
Then, we discussed past projects that other groups did with the Scribbler to make sure that there was nothing that we missed.
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2:53 pm – Mirza Presents
Paper: TeRK – a Flexible Tool for Science and Technology Education
Author: Illah R. Nourbakhsh
University: Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh
Discussion:
– In summary, this article is about robot/human interaction. The research is in making robots more like peers to humans. Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) was the resulting tool kit of his work.
– Robot “diaries” concept was made to target attracting girls into the field of robotics. The robot would ideally be responsive to a diary entry or other piece of text; to express emotion.
– TeRK was replaced by Qwerk and VexPro which was then replaced by Hummingbird. The paper does not state specific results of the study.
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3:34 pm – Michael Presents
Paper: Oh That’s what you use Pi for!
Author: David Miller and Cathryn Stein
University: Case Institute
Paper: Measuring the Effectiveness of using Robotics in Computer Education
Author: …
University: …
Discussion:
– In summary, this study tries to tackle the problem in America of people not having a practical knowledge of Math and Science using robots. The organization that they work with is KIPR.
– In summary, does robotics influence people to study Computer Science? Do classes with robots keep students in the field? Actually robotics seemed to put a strain on their education, surprisingly.
– They use as much data as possible to find the conclusion on whether or not robotics will help computer science. Allowing the students to take the robot home is much better.
– A robot that required less knowledge of hardware would probably improve the student’s learning of programming, because it does not take away from understanding the program aspect itself.
– Then we talked about how important Algebra is in high school
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Please go to www.createlab.ri.cmu.edu
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Goals for next Wednesday:
– Everyone can connect to both robots
– Scribbler is going to finish C++ Tool Kit on SVN
– Pleo is going to have a hardware and C++ Tool Kit (minus examples)