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