Month / July 2014

by shannonchance

Making Videos, Making Fairs

Producing robot-building events requires warp-speed learning.  In just the past few days, helping with a Dublin Maker event, I learned:

  • to quickly make and post educational videos
  • to setup and run a RoboSlam educational booth
  • how to teach teenty-tiny tots to build robots
  • what “Makers” are, what they do, and how they talk (it’s a whole new language to me!)
  • about 3-D printing and how to build (and even invent) your own machines using laser cutters and 3-D printers

I’ve posted links to two videos I made as well as some photos from last Saturday’s Dublin Maker event.

Here’s the edited video we posted to introduce RoboSlam.com to website visitors.  I am really quite proud of it!

Here’s the short promo video we posted earlier last week to advertise the fair:

I wish I could convey the excitement of seeing little four and six year old girls build their first robots… and tiny little boys jump up and down with glee as they discover the difference between remote-controlled and autonomous robots!

Although I captured some behind-the-scenes images of set up and take down with my still cameras (posted below) they don’t come anywhere close to showing what it was like to be there.  Fortunately, I was able to capture some video of the kids building and operating robots so we can learn from it and create even better programs in the future!

The Dublin Maker event was held on the grounds of Trinity College.
My colleagues and I set up a booth to show off the RoboSlam robots.
DIT lecturer Ted Burke had designed an entirely new robot (in blue) for use with remote controllers.
DIT student Shane Ormonde invented a robot just for the event.
We displayed RoboSumo robots made by DIT students…
…helped kids learn about and operate various types of robots…
…explained engineering concepts to people of all ages…
…re-connected with participants from previous RoboSlam workshops…
…and taught a number of fair-goers how to build their own robots. One 6 year old girl built a robot start to finish!
Our RoboSlam volunteers also got…
…to visit other people’s exhibits….
…learn creative new approaches…
…and meet Makers like Tony, from the FabLab in Derry.
We also met David Hunt…
…from Limerick…
…who makes camera equipment…
…and other nifty devices that are remote controlled…
…using “Raspberry Pi” controllers.
David Hunt uses laser cutters and this 3-D printer to make parts…
…for home-made machines like this.
The fun didn’t end Saturday, though.
Ted dragged me along today…
…to tote display parts…
…across town from Trinity to DIT Kevin Street.

 

by shannonchance

TV News Feature

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday, RTE aired a piece on RoboSlam that features Ted Burke (I previously blogged about the filming).

The piece describes preparations for the Dublin Make event, to be held Saturday, July 26 on the grounds of Trinity College.  The news segment is available to view for seven days.

Click

http://www.rte.ie/news/player/one-news/2014/0724/#page=3

and then drag the slider to 23:12.  Getting to it takes a bit of effort since the internet version sometimes opens with commercials, but it’s a very cool and fun news pieces.

Great news work by Sinead Morris!

 

I’ve also found announcements about the Marie Curie fellowship in DIT’s spring Research News magazine (see pages 34-35) and on The College of William and Mary’s School of Education Alumni News webpage.

 
DIT Research News http://www.dit.ie/media/ditresearchenterprise/dredocuments/Research%20news%20Vol%207.1.pdf

DIT Research News feature, see pages 34-

WM SOE almuni page https://education.wm.edu/news/alumninews/chance-2014.php

W&M School of Education alumni page announcement

by shannonchance

Vantage Points

What you see depends upon where and how you look....

What you see depends upon where and how you look….

In engineering, the teaching-from-the-podium-by-manual-and-textbook approach simply isn’t working.  It’s not attracting enough students to study engineering.  It’s not engaging and fascinating enough of them.  It’s not spurring their creative thinking skills in enough ways.

I’m clearly not the only one who has noticed this.  The National Science Foundation and oodles of engineering scholars agree.  And now that the engineering profession — as a group of individuals bound by common knowledge, education, and language — has come to acknowledge these shortcomings, it is time to address the problems head-on.

Fergus Whelan commented that I need to think outside this box.... Thanks to Frank Daly for the fabulous photo.

Not liking to be trapped inside the box….

Making such a change is difficult.  It’s messy and complex.  It requires thinking outside the vocabulary and methods that created the profession in the first place. In line with the old cliché: engineering has to starting thinking outside its own box.  Most people today agree: We need engineers to see and think in new ways.  And indeed, many teachers are:

  • working to prompt the needed type of thinking in engineering
  • testing new teaching methods
  • working to evaluate results

I am one of them.

I have two sets of skills that I am hoping can help in positive ways.  First, I’m an architect and seasoned educator.  Second, I’m an education researcher.  From this vantage point, I see that engineering (programs and pedagogies) can benefit from what architecture programs do.

The architecture profession, for instance, has always used hands-on teaching.  Architecture schools are full of students and full of creative energy.  Architecture and engineering aren’t so different, yet our ideas about what they “are” differ, and the way they are taught differs as well

“Engineering,” I insist, can benefit from design thinking, from techniques used in design education, and from sharing ideas with architects as well.  Upcoming blogs will explain how.

Below is a little gallery of recent research activities, including a short promo video (shot with my iPad in a single take) for our RoboSlam exhibit this weekend’s Dublin Maker event.

Meeting with Dr. Ela Hogan, a former Marie Curie Fellow and expert in “futures” (i.e., strategic planning and/or envisioning the future) .
Discussing Problem Based Learning pedagogies with DIT physics student, Rachel Harding, who will work with me as a research intern next winter.
Meeting with an engineering dean (center) and the president (right) of Warsaw Institute of Technology to discuss research plans.
by shannonchance

Expanding the Engineers’ Box

Fergus Whelan commented that I need to think outside this box.... Thanks to Frank Daly for the fabulous photo.

Fergus Whelan commented on this image that I need to think outside this box!  Many thanks to Frank Daly for the fabulous photo. My students, having sent his look many times before, certainly empathize with you!

In all corners of the globe today, companies are clamoring for skilled engineers. They want a larger pool of applicants who are creative, flexible thinkers prepared to address complex, emerging questions riddled with interrelated unknowns. Like industry, the sectors of healthcare, education, and government also have great need for well-rounded thinkers with strong engineering acumen.

Simply put: the world needs more people who can think across systems and see how things relate at multiple scales. We need people who can identify problems and create new solutions from the ground up. People who aren’t so closely bound to existing systems, ideas, and protocols that they can’t construct entirely new schemes for thinking and behaving.

Today, governmental organizations (like Science Foundation Ireland and the National Science Foundation in the USA) are working hard to address the shortfall in the number of engineers by generously funding education of, as well as research by, engineers and scientists. They seek better ways to teach and think about engineering and science.

The blogs I will be posting in the near future have to do with:

  • the way we think about and conceptualize engineering
  • how I think this needs to change
  • how architects and education researchers can help

Please note: I’m going to be explaining things that I’m trying to work out in my head and do this as if I’m speaking to a friend or relative who knows little about research. That means I may not be “100% right” in every explanation. But as you’ll see, that is a risk that must be taken for the sake of building knowledge. (It’s all part of this new “paradigm” for working and thinking that engineering needs to implement more widely… more on that to come!)

I do hope you’ll follow along on this research adventure, where I’m working to bring qualitative, social science research and design thinking into more facets of engineering education.  Yes, these are gutsy claims I’m making — particularly since I’m new to research and new to engineering.  Let’s see if I can live up to such promises….

by shannonchance

Globetrotting with Missouri Engineers

University of Missouri students and their dueling robots.

University of Missouri students and their dueling robots.

For the past three summers, Dr. Robert O’Connell has conducted study abroad programs here in Dublin.  His programs engage engineering students from the University of Missouri.

A fight to the finish.

A fight to the finish.

This year, when Bob asked Dublin Institute of Technology lecturer Gavin Duffy to tour the students around the engineering facilities at DIT, Gavin leapt at the chance to apply Problem-Based Learning (PBL) techniques.

Gavin rallied his colleagues, and our RoboSlam team provided the Missouri students with a three-hour workshop on robot construction.

Since we had limited time to deliver what normally takes a day, Drs. Ted Burke and Damon Berry had pre-programmed the micro-controllers for the students. As a result, the students were able to focus on assembling the components and then streamlining their robots bodies for improved performance.

We culminated the event with a heavy weight Sumo competition.

Drs. Damon Berry and Bob O'Connell chatting after the RoboSlam event.

Drs. Damon Berry and Bob O’Connell chatting after the RoboSlam event.

In this event, the robots compete in a circular  “sumo ring” in pairs. Each robot attempts to locate its opponent and push the other robot out of the sumo ring.

After the paired competition, for additional fun, we placed all the robots in the ring at once, and cheered them on as they valiantly defended their positions in the ring.  In the end, only one robot remained.

Several of the lecturers in DIT’s Electrical Engineering program hold deep affinity for the coordinator of Missouri’s study abroad program, Dr. Bob O’Connell.  Bob was one of DIT’s first Fulbright scholars in Engineering Education (the post I later held).  While he was here as a Fulbright, Bob completed DIT’s Post-Graduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching.  He also helped teach courses and he was part of the faculty learning group that discussed ways to implement hands-on learning in the Electrical Engineering curriculum.

Upon returning home to the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Missouri, Bob implemented a number of the Problem-Based Learning techniques he discovered in Dublin.

I had the pleasure of interviewing Bob last year, to learn about his experiences with the faculty learning group.

The fact that so many of DIT’s former Engineering Education Fulbrighters return for ongoing projects provides testimony to the learning community and sense of belonging these Irish scholars have created.  DIT is a very special place, indeed!

Gavin assisting University of Missouri students.
Damon Berry describing a robot-building technique.
Ted Burke troube-shooting.
A fight to the finish.
University of Missouri students and their dueling robots.
The two winning teams.
Drs. Damon Berry and Bob O’Connell chatting after the RoboSlam event.
DIT Lecturers Ted Burke, Richard Hayes, and Damon Berry.
by shannonchance

Sinead’s Slammin’ TV Production

RTE's Sinead Morris filming DIT's Ted Burke using a kitted-out iPhone 5.

RTE’s Sinead Morris filming DIT’s Ted Burke using a kitted-out iPhone 5.

TV journalist Sinead Morris came to DIT’s Kevin Street location today to film robot construction in action. Our RoboSlam team leaders — Ted, Damon, Frank, and I — are preparing for the upcoming Dublin Maker event, to be held at Trinity College on Saturday, July 26.  Sinead wanted to capture the activity.

The Dublin Maker event served as the impetus, Sinead explained, but the main intention of her piece is to show what the RoboSlam group is doing with robotics.

Sinead’s production is likely to air on RTE’s digital news channel, News Now.

Ted and Sinead set up for a shot of the robot underworld.

Ted and Sinead set up for a shot of the robot underworld.

Sinead is testing photojournalism innovations. The Irish television company where she works, RTE, wants its journalists to gain experience with spontaneous, low-tech approaches — so staff members can shoot, edit, and post “on the go.”  At the end of this innovation project, RTE staff will have the skills needed to disseminate news on the run… when opportunities arise.

RTE asked its staff to take this challenge: produce interesting and informative pieces wholly on their iPhones.

Hampton University journalism students were learning to do the same when my friend Tony Brown was dean of the program so, for me, watching this process firsthand proved fascinating.  The move toward spontaneous creation of new content aligns with the goals for our RoboSlam project; we want our workshop participants to take their robots home and start creating new “home grown” code for operating the ‘bots.

TV news technology has come a long way in my lifetime. When I was a kid in the ’70s and ’80s, my parents were television journalists. They used 16mm film equipment, and I learned to use the same when I was in college studying architecture.

Today’s capture-edit-and-post culture speeds the process. Mom and Dad used to shoot the footage and put it on a Trailways bus bound for the TV station one hour away. While it was in transit, they’d phone the station to make a voice recording of the text for the station to overlay.

It would appear in its synchronized form on that night’s news.

Now, Viola!, Sinead can do, alone and in moments, what it took dozens of people hours to create in the 1980s.

Robot show down.

Robot show down.

So, I was able to learn quite a bit from Sinead today, about software as well as hardware, and perhaps now I can give her videography techniques a go.

She also inspired me to write up this blog on site, while she’s finishing up her interview with Ted. Moments ago, she asked him what it’s like to work this type of job. He said he loves coming in every day to build robots and work with students.

He didn’t mention that he and his colleagues are currently on vacation and aren’t at all required to be here.  They just can’t keep themselves away!

We actually had quite a few interesting projects underway in the lab today while we were filming… a veritable Santa’s workshop of robotics. For instance, one of DIT’s third year students, Shane Ormonde, was here developing a new robot to show at the Dublin Maker event. He just completed a degree in Electrical and Control Engineering (DT009) and will pursue yet another degree in the fall.

Shane is conducting a robotics experiment while on summer holiday.  It’s a nice break, he says, from his call-center job.  (Gotta love that initiative!)

Shane Ormonde's new global robot arm.

Shane Ormonde’s new global robot arm.

Shane is building and programming a robotic system that, using a globe, can show in real time what the International Space Station is actually tracking at the same moment. Eventually, his robot will also be able to point to any location a person requests, using the laser on the end of its moving arm.

The globe itself moves to set the correct longitude and the arm moves to pinpoint the latitude.

He originally wanted people to be able to tune in via internet to ask the robot to identify specific locations and complete other such actions.  Shane’s creation will be featured as one part of our DIT RoboSlam exhibit at the Dublin Maker event.

Come join us next Saturday – near the cricket pitch at Trinity – and see!

Shane Ormonde’s new global robot arm.
RTE’s Sinead Morris filming DIT’s Ted Burke using a kitted-out iPhone 5.
RTE’s Sinead Morris filming DIT’s Ted Burke using a kitted-out iPhone 5.
Robot show down.
Ted and Sinead set up for a shot of the robot underworld.
by shannonchance

Sheryl Sorby Spotlights Spatial Skills

Dr. Sheryl Sorby‘s groundbreaking research on spatial visualization brought awareness of spatial reasoning to engineering education worldwide.  Sheryl’s work highlights the importance of educational research and illustrates how applied research can make a real difference in the way we learn and teach.

Sheryl is a pioneer in engineering education research — the area where I’m now working to establish myself.  She was doing this type of research long before Engineering Education Research (EER) was recognized as a distinct field of study.  As such, she helped pave the way for all of us who are working to understand how people learn engineering and design today.  Today, she’s actively leading research teams on this topic.

Last year, Sheryl served as Ireland’s Fulbright Scholar in Engineering Education (that’s the post I held the year before) and she made noteworthy contributions. Whereas I applied for the Fulbright position when I was a “baby doc” (straight out of grad school), Sheryl brought the wealth of experience of a professor emerita (which essentially means she retired with academic kudos).  Awards she has received include the 2011 Sharon Keillor Award for Women in Engineering Education bestowed by the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE).

Recently, Sheryl delivered a TED talk at the 2014 TEDxFulbrightDublin event organized by the Fulbright Commission in Ireland, an event pictured above.  The TEDx talk, “Recruiting Women for Science, Engineering, Technology and Maths,” is available on YouTube. YouTube also features her webinar presentation on “The Importance of Spatial Skills.”

Her TEDx talk describes ways spatial-thinking skills correspond to academic performance in engineering. Her research has identified gender-related discrepancies in spatial visualization skills and, as a result, she has developed and implemented programs to help alleviate students’ weaknesses in this area. Her work has made a clear and measurable difference!  (I hope someday, I can say the same of mine!)

Sheryl researches other engineering topics as well.  Michigan Tech’s website explains she “is known for preparing engineering students and middle school students to think like engineers. Her research interests include advanced composite materials for use in civil infrastructure and 3-D computer graphics for visualization of complex behaviors.”

The National Science Foundation has supported many of her projects, and she even worked (or, “did a rotation”) at the NSF headquarters, as Program Director in NSF’s Division of Undergraduate Education.

I’m proud to walk in Sheryl’s footsteps, and thankful for the work she’s done!