Building Star Wars Droids Made Me a Better Teacher

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[Applause]

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ah

i have been a nerd my entire life i’m a

computer science professor

and i run technology for schools let’s

be honest for a second here

it comes with territory about five years

ago

i saw a couple guys building a replica

of r2d2 from the movie star wars

i’m a huge star wars fan obviously right

and i want to get into robotics so i

thought to myself is this something

i could do could i could i build

something like this

well i looked into it and found out that

there are builders clubs for

almost everything including r2d2

you know i never thought in a million

years that i would discover

a different way of doing project-based

learning in my classroom

this little droid here next to me took

me two and a half years to build

and trust me when i tell you this this

was a journey of failure for me

i broke almost everything that you see

here

you’re fine now

luckily for r2 luckily for me i never

quit

the successes began to add and before

you know it he was done

and i was so excited and proud to share

him with literally everybody

because the process of building r2 i had

gained a level of confidence i’d never

had before i had more

critical thinking and problem solving

skills you know

i was no longer scared to fail

it’s it’s funny how things happen and

how you just kind of stumble across

ideas

i remember like it was yesterday i’m in

a meeting with my colleagues and we’re

talking about our internship program

and we wanted to build greater critical

thinking skills

and then bam like a flash of lightning

it hits me

if i could build a program that

replicated the same experiences i had

building r2d2

then students would gain additional

critical thinking problem-solving skills

but how could i get them to do this

and what would i teach them so first i

started with what to teach them

this had to be technical skills this had

to be

programming electronics system

operations these

big ticket items that i have in my

classroom

because i needed this to be a area i

could assess them

on and i know that

a lot of students care about their

actual grades so i needed this to be

beyond

just the letter grade so then

it occurred to me i wanted to build r2d2

because i love this guy

you don’t have to laugh at me because

that’s the truth

i love this robot and that’s what had to

happen the students had to love their

project

it had to be theirs it had to be a

project that they

owned so early on i decided that

ownership and freedom of project

selection

was key to making all of this work

so about a year ago we started this

process

did it work well before we get into that

let me first introduce the robots we

have on stage with us today

let me back up r2

so next r2 we have our mars rover this

is a one-quarter scale

rover of the curiosity rover from actual

mars

in front here we have our little mouse

droid one of our star wars robots that

runs around

next to him we have papo puppo is a

original design carries textbooks inside

head lifts up has a screen on those kind

of pieces

and then on the stage here next to me on

the couch sitting here is bb8 and cb23

both these robots 3d printed and work by

having a central motor in their very

center

connected side that rolls that sphere

there’s a magnet in the very top of the

area that keeps the head on as it rolls

around

it’s a fantastic piece of equipment

well i know people like to know

so every robot here has a story of

failures

and so i want to talk about a couple of

this first one i’m going to talk about

is the

mars rover up here the mars rover team

had to figure out how to cut

exact notches in steel and they needed a

lathe

so they decided they had to build their

own rudimentary lathe using

a drill a dremel and some ingenuity

and they made it happen all of those

type of successes move the project

forward because they had failed in

3d printing design programming all those

areas

but they were able to successfully

complete this and move it forward

the bba team back here had spent eight

months

3d printing this robot and thanks to the

help of the bb8 builders club this was

one of the first bb-8s built

in the state of ohio it was great we got

invited to

news stations and conferences and at our

very first conference

the main motor blew up

i know right it was very stressful

because the very next day the lieutenant

governor

of ohio wanted to see the robots well

i’m happy to say that we were able to

successfully get the robot working

and everything worked out fine i was so

proud of those students

because that was a difficult thing to go

through so

does this self-selected project-based

learning

make for more effective teaching more

engaged students

well i could tell you that the student’s

grades increased

and well for the most part they did but

for me

the main measure was the engagement if a

student had a project that was theirs

i mean really theirs they would show up

they’d be there morning afternoon

weekend

working on their projects failing even

through breaks and failures they would

keep coming back

learning learning all the skills we had

talked about earlier

you know i’ve been told that this is a

sneaky way to educate students because

it’s not about the robots

it’s not about you it’s about it’s about

the students being passionate about

their projects

and the teaching being effective for me

it’s robots

for an english student maybe they are

writing a book instead of

just writing a paper for a music student

maybe they’re composing

an album instead of just practicing

their instrument for a political science

student

maybe they’re actually working on a

campaign instead of just reading about

the processes

education can provide real ownership

by having students complete processes

and projects they actually want to

complete

at the same time teaching them the

valuable skills that are necessary for

their craft

when education works like that we not

only have students that

loved what they did in their classroom

but are more successful in life

you