When I woke up late today, I honestly thought this day was going to suck in a really bad way. You see, I had this workshop that I signed up for. I knew that'd it would be held during the school holidays. What I didn't know at that point in time was the location. The Singapore Science Center. That's right, the one located in Jurong, the far west area of Singapore whereas I stay in Hougang, the northeast of Singapore. It's a good hour and a half journey on Singapore's efficient public transportation.
So get this, I woke up late and had to rush to get ready. As a result I didn't have breakfast and forgot two tools I thought of bringing today, one of which was the essential tool for functioning in Singapore. That's right my cell phone. The other was my digital camera. And I only realized this when I was already halfway through the journey on the MRT - mass rapid transit (it's kinda like the subway system in the US except it doesn't just move underground). Anyway, being sleepy as I was, I missed the station I was supposed to drop off on to switch to another line (There are 2 main lines - North/South line, the Northeast line and the East/West line). Seeing as I was quite strapped for time, I got off at the next nearest station - when I woke up of course - and took a cab there.
Upon reaching the Singapore Science Center, which is a cool place by the way- though I haven't been there in close to a decade - I then remembered that I had forgotten another important item from my bag. The course notes.
I made my way into the lecture studio nonetheless. Would have taken pictures of the place to display here if only I had brought my digicam. Either way, most of my colleagues were already there and some of them were already having their personal laptops installed with the software that we would be using during the workshop. Although I brought my own laptop I was more interested in acquiring free wireless internet access. There wasn't really a need to anyway, seeing as my school would be bringing school laptops with the programs already installed in them. So I was basically YouTube-ing and IM-ing while everyone else was getting ready. Got some free Milo too, courtesy of my boss, who surprisingly showed up for the workshop.
The theoretical aspect of the workshop, which was the first half, was amazingly not as dry as I expected. Prof. Chris Rogers managed to give a kind of familiar, friendly atmosphere to it which certainly helped matters in delivering the theory of robotics and how it is being implemented to help raise students' interest in academic subjects. I, of course, managed to assess all this while watching Letterman on YouTube. The practical aspect of the workshop was cool though. We were given this Lego RCX (don't ask me what this abbreviation means), told to assemble it into a mobile vehicle, upload the program from our laptop on what we wanted the vehicle to do and basically move. I thought it'd be easy but it got kind of embarrassing when me and my buddy for the day needed a Secondary (Elementary) school student to help us out with the assembly and operation of the RCX.
There was an objective in the end where we were needed to send our mobile RCX over a distance and for it to stop right before a Lego angel we were asked to make in between. All this with only being able to manipulate the time in which the vehicle can move through the Robolab program. Me and Avni (my buddy for the day)'s mobile RCX had a Lego angel on top of it........ I really wish I'd brought my camera so that I could take a picture of it. After a few trial runs we were almost able to do it. Almost, meaning running over the other Lego angel that was waiting at the other end. Oh well, at least there wasn't too much of a need to alert the ambulance.
All in all it was a good experience and something that would essentially benefit students in terms of hands-on learning. I don't know if I would personally incorporate this into my lessons as of right now. In the future perhaps, when I am more settled and comfortable with the current work load.
The workshop was run by the Center for Engineering Education Outreach. Programs, videos and curriculum developed for robotics used in teaching academic subjects can be found at Lego Engineering.
Check em out.
No comments:
Post a Comment