Hi everyone,
Some of you may be putting together robotics courses for the coming semester. The attachments and the following sites may be of some help. These resources will be placed on a website shortly. We hope to incorporate all these resources into a single coherent curriculum in the near future. If you know of any others please share them with the group.
The Workforce Silicone Valley website is, http://www.engineering-ed.org/Robotics/Robotics01.htm the actual site for the curriculum is http://www.paly.net/~dbertain/eng-ed/Robotics/robo/index.html
Here are some sources from my bookmarks:
Maja Mataric at USC has a nice course in robotics for undergraduates. The Syllabus is online at http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci445/. Check out all the descriptions to the right. If your course wants to be UC approved it needs to lead into a course like this.
Maja's text for her lab looks very interesting and may be appropriate for high school students: Robotic Explorations, http://vig.prenhall.com/catalog/academic/product/1,4096,0130895687,00. html I hope to get Maja's comments soon. If you go to the website it has a button for requesting an exam copy of the book:-) You have to put a college name in to request a copy and a course name. If you mention our robotics group it may make them more aware of us and our needs, and we too can get the books legitimately.
Books from Robostore http://robotstore.com/catalog/list.asp?cid=24
Robotbooks: http://www.robotbooks.com/
Board of Education/BASIC Stamp Curricula: http://www.technologyindex.com/education/store/robotics/robotics_home.htm
Build Your Own Underwater Robot and Other
by Harry Bohm (Author)
In order to design a robot students and teachers should have a good understanding of physical science. The textbook Science and Math for Technology, is a great book for applying physical science when designing and building robots. Chapters are set up similar to a classical physics book.Cartoons illustrate the science concept. It is targeted for 3rd grade thru high school. All supporting math for physical sicence is included. It is availabe from Pitsco LEGO Dacta at 21.95. The author, Tom Barrowman is a Charter member of the New York State Learning Standards and a math, science and technology teacher trainer.
I also have seen another book that seems to be good for beginning robotics: Applied Robotics, by Edwin Wise. This seems like an inexpensive, current but good book. You can find it at your favorite book seller like Amazon.com.
Another good source for books is http://robotbooks.com. Many of the books are for hobbyist and not as much for educators.
There are lots of Mindstorms hobby books. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/38VJG3YWJ ERBL/qid=990488870/sr=5-1/ref=lm_aps_1/107-5290194-3823760
Here is the Robotics and Automation Society Robotics Education Website, http://ras-ed.missouri.edu/index.php This was created primarily for Universities but there is a great deal of good information here. You will find that if you click on "High school" the page is empty. I will see what I can do to change that:-)
Other sources of curriculum that are targeted more to the high school level and below:
NASA educational materials: http://spacelink.nasa.gov/Instructional.Materials/Curriculum.Support/T echnology/Robotics/.index.html
Rover Ranch http://prime.jsc.nasa.gov/ROV/. Check out "Robots 101".
Cassie Bowman's Robotics Education Project Website: http://Robots.nasa.gov/a_educators.htm You will find lots of information about robots at NASA and robotics links broken down by grade level.
Doug Bertain's Robotics Unit for the Worforce Silicon Valley Engineering/Technology: http://www.engineering-ed.org/Robotics/Robotics01.htm. Click "Robotics Lessons on line"
KISS Institute lessons in Robotics: http://www.kipr.org/curriculum/content.html
Our very own Ken Boone's robotics page: http://users.aol.com/kensrobots/kensrobots.html
I hope that helps everyone. I am sure there are many others that I have not mentioned. Please feel free to post other curriculum pages that you find useful.
I also have seen another book that seems to be good for beginning robotics: Applied Robotics, by Edwin Wise. This seems like an inexpensive, current but good book. You can find it at your favorite book seller like Amazon.com.
Another good source for books is http://robotbooks.com. Many of the books are for hobbyist and not as much for educators.
There are lots of Mindstorms hobby books. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/listmania/list-browse/-/38VJG3YWJERBL/qid=990488870/sr=5-1/ref=lm_aps_1/107-5290194-3823760
Here is the Robotics and Automation Society Robotics Education Website, http://ras-ed.missouri.edu/index.php This was created primarily for Universities but there is a great deal of good information here. You will find that if you click on "High school" the page is empty. I will see what I can do to change that:-)
Regards,
Ken Berry ksberry@jpl.nasa.gov
Jet Propulsion Laboratory (818) 393-5386
4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 180-109 fax: (818) 393-4977
Pasadena, CA 91109
PS: the attachments are in Word.
Principles_of_Eng.doc
EngDesignI_II.doc