CREATE Lab Satellite Network

The June Harless Center held an Arts and Bots training in Mingo County at Mingo Central High School on November 5, 2012.  Twelve elementary and middle school science and art teachers from Burch Elementary, Gilbert Middle, Matewan Middle, Williamson Middle, Burch Middle and Mingo Central High School took part in the training, which was funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.

The Arts and Bots project integrates technology, robotics and art through the use of familiar arts and crafts supplies, circuit boards, lights, motors and sensors.  Students design, build and program robots that tell stories of literary and historical characters and events while promoting technological literacy and informal learning.  

Arts and Bots is one of several projects implemented by the Harless CREATE Satellite, a branch of Carnegie Mellon University’s CREATE Lab at the June Harless Center.  The satellite provides robotics and technology initiatives to West Virginia schools including Marshall University Professional Development Schools.

Due to its success Arts and Bots, originally designed to encourage middle school girls’ interest in STEM topics, was expanded to include both genders and a larger age group.  The Harless CREATE Satellite enables educators and rural communities in West Virginia a real-time portal to the flow of cutting edge technologies and programs being developed at the lab in Pittsburgh.

Doug Force's, math teacher at Barboursville Middle School in Barboursville, West Virginia accepted the challenge to inject robotics into his curriculum first semester of the 2012-2013 school year. His students used everyday household items to make robots. Once their robots were created, their challenge was to find what they did that pertained to mathematics. Other questions asked were as follows :

1. How do I make something happen on my robot when I get close to it?

2. How do I make a purple strobe light?

3. How do I make something move on my robot?

4.  What is unique about my robot? 

5.  What have I learned from this experience?

Students and their parents brought their robots to teachers' Arts and Bots follow- up meeting this week on Marshall's campus to share them with pre-service and in-service teachers. 

Next semester, Doug will continue to use Arts and Bots with a new group of students and we look forward to seeing more creative robots!

The waterbot pilot team of Rick Sharpe (Huntingtin High School) and Brian McNeal (Cabell Midland High School) went out Sunday October 7th, 2012 and installed 2 waterbots along fourpole creek in Huntington.  Fourpole creek is a large creek that runs through the center of Huntington including through Ritter Park. Rick and Brian will be utilizing the data captured by the waterbot and incorporating it into their science classes where they already teach water quality. The waterbot will be a great addition to their curriculum and plans to install a third in Martinsbug, West Virginia with a local science teacher there are in the works. 

A summer waterbot pilot was held with two science teachers from Huntington High School and another teacher from Cabell Midland High School on July 24th, 2012. Pat McKee, Rich Sharpe and Brian McNeal already teach about water quality in their classrooms and will be using waterbot throughout the year to monitor local watersheds in several different areas. A blog has been created to record findings and share results with others (http://cabellwaterbot.blogspot.com/).  Once established, future plans include training additional teachers in multiple areas. 

Teachers from Ona Elementary, Beverly Elementary, Cornerstone Academy, Kellogg Elementary, and Barboursville Middle took part in a 2-day training on arts and bots on July 10th and 11th on Marshall University's campus.  The 8 teachers agreed to pilot the project and integrate it into existing classroom curriculum and will be using it in a variety of subjects including physics, math, reading and career exploration.  Allen Perry Physics and Chemistry teacher from South Point High School in South Point, Ohio was on hand to help train the teachers on equipment use while the Harless CREATE Satellite team assisted with curriculum. The project has expanded to include additional schools and teachers since the initial training last fall.  We look forward to seeing what the teachers and students come up with this year!

The June Harless Center held a weeklong summer camp June 4^th -7^th, 2012 for children entering 2nd-5th grade on Marshall University's campus.  Allen Perry, a Physics and Chemistry teacher from South Point High School (Ohio), lead the camp with the Harless staff assisting.  Allen participated in the roll out which involved 4 local schools this past school year. Children gained inspiration for their designs from a virtual tour on the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History’s website and used the engineering design process to create their robots with the goal being to learn how to create and program a robot.

ASK:          What do you want your robot to look like?

                   What do you want your robot to be able to do?

IMAGINE:   Research

                   Brainstorm ideas

                   Choose the best one!

PLAN:        Draw a diagram

                   Make a list of materials you will need

CREATE:   Follow your plan and create it!

                   Test it out!

IMPROVE:  Talk about what works, what doesn’t, and what could  work better!     

                    Modify your design to make it better

                  Test it out! 

On Thursday, a showcase of the student’s work was held and parents, friends and family were invited to attend.  Some of the robot designs included an alligator, truck, Sacajawea, wooly mammoth, and recycle bots. The children enjoyed the experience and the parents were impressed with the designs that their children made and the creativity that was used

 The June Harless Center for Rural Educational Research and Development, College of Education at Marshall University, held a year-end celebration showcasing Harless CREATE Satellite projects on May 17, 2012 from 6-8 in the Memorial Student Center’s Don Morris Room.  

Featured projects included: the GigaPan Outreach Project, Arts and Bots, Hear Me, and Message From Me. In addition, a new WaterBot project was introduced.  GigaPan enablesstudents to take GigaPan panoramic images of their communities and activities and share them with peers across the world. Arts and Bots is a customized robot designed to integrate technology, literature, and history through the use of art supplies, circuit boards, lights, motors and sensors. Hear Me seeks to amplify kids voices using media and technology to create a world where kids are heard, acknowledged and understood, thereby giving them the power to inspire change in their lives, communities and the world. WaterBot is a citizen scientist project that prototypes a low-cost, easy and mobile method to monitor water quality, empowering communities, educators and children to monitor their watershed systems.

The Harless CREATE Satellite grant, which was funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, provides rural Appalachian schools continuous and seamless access to technologies, educational resources and ideas generated at the CREATE Lab in Pittsburgh. In addition it enabled teachers to integrate cutting edge technology into existing curriculum.   

Schools showcasing projects are from the Marshall University Professional Development Partnership Schools and include the Early Education STEM Center, Huntington High, Kellogg, Guyandotte and Ceredo Elementary schools, Beverly Hills, Milton, Barboursville Middle schools, as well as Cherry River Elementary in Nicholas county, Beverly Elementary in Randolph county and South Point High School in Ohio.

Students in the Pre-Engineering class at Huntington High School show off their robots.

Shark

"My shark is hooked up to a light and motion sensor. There is a fish in his mouth that has a LED light for an eye, and vibrates. It is sequenced so that if you get too close, the fish vibrates and when the lights go out his eyes light up."

Helicopter

"I am going to explain a little bit about my robot. Well first of all it is a battering ram helicopter. What it does is that if you want to take a building from the top to the bottom you use this because it comes down like a hammer. But you have to be a pretty good pilot because one mistake can cause you to crash. This shows you how crazy my imagination is. Here is a video to show you exactly what it does."

Rain

"My project is about a rainy day where there is a cloud that turns over and rains. There is a servo motor on the top loft and it has balsa wood where the rain sits on. When it turns over it rains little blue packing peanuts to the ground."

Wizard

"I was inspired to create this scene while working in the orchestra for our school's production of Beauty and the Beast. While playing the music, I realized that the main themes of the music were small and oft repeated. I wanted to incorporate this aspect into a small scene. Originally the wizard was going to tell the story, but ironically, Beauty and the Beast caused time to run short. His lines would have been things such as "Darkness fell on the forest" and "Stay away!!" and "I told you to stay away!" I am quite pleased with this project."

Car

"The robot is car like design with features that are similar to ones you would find on a car. The headlights brighten when the lights go out and the brake lights brighten when the robot stops. The robot will stop and back up when an object is placed in front of it before resuming its forward motion. The movement of the robot is powered by a motor that is attached to a sprocket that turns a chain which is connected to sprockets fixed on the robots two axles thus turning the wheels."

Dragon

"This robot is a design of a dragon. I choose this design because I figured it would be cool and not a lot of people would chose this design. It uses a motion sensor which is located on its left arm, 2 tri colored LEDs for eyes, 3 servos to move its wings and its tail. The whole body of the dragon is made out of popsicle sticks and has fake fire coming out of its mouth. The wings is a type of green frabic and it is pieced togethered with glue and tape. The robot does a lot of stuff like move its wings and tail, makes sounds, and changes it's eye color."

R2D2

"I decided to make my robot a model of R2D2. I went to my basement to salvage some trash and old junk which we no longer needed and as a result, the base of my robot is made of a flashlight and foam. The head is entirely foam, and all of the body is wrapped in super glue. I bought cardboard boxes for $0.44 each and constructed multiple legs and other useful parts. parts of its eyes are also the top of a pen cap and all of the blue shiny paper is origami paper from my drawers. All in all, it was a fun project, but there were some difficult parts which had to be overcome. One of which is putting the hummingbird inside caused wiring extremely difficult and next to impossible to see where what was going. Thats where tweezers come it! The next difficult issue, probably the hardest, was overcoming torque with R2D2's wheels. the motor does not have any sort of attachment process, so only glue could have been used. This caused the twisting to come off multiple times until I found the perfect ratio of hot glue and super glue. Finally, the last difficult issue was the fact that the arts and bots program was unable to load my MC Hammer "cant touch this" song. I had to troubleshoot it and work it through itunes instead. My original plan wanted it to pace back and forth, checking every second for an object, and when something would obstruct its view, it would dance. I instead had to put this at a predictable time since I, manually, had to click itunes. overall all, it was a fun and interesting project and I recommend it for any highschool kid."

School link: http://www.edline.net/pages/Huntington_High_School

Aliens Among Us, An Arts & Bots project from Ceredo Elementary in West Virginia. A group of 33 5th grade students created 16 alien robots. Check out their creations below.

Arts & Bots project from the Harless CREATE Satellite's 2012 annual showcase: