Background
The BoRG has endeavored from its inception
to bring robotics to the general public. If
successful, our hope was membership would grow
as a result. We find however — as I imagine most
robot clubs do — that more people are more
willing to begin a single robotics project than to
build robots as a long-term hobby. This means
robot clubs must do a lot of fishing in an effort to
hook that one person or family. The BoRG’s latest
attempt to bring robots to the people and the
people to our robotics club was through our local
community education.
Community education is a program — often
offered through a public school or university — to
provide informal educational opportunities to the
public. People with expertise in subjects like say,
starting a business or practicing yoga, arrange to
teach these subjects. Community Education then
handles student registration and assigns a school
or university classroom where the instructor will
teach the course for a short period of time like one
month, for example.
Late last year, the BoRG started developing a
Community Education class focused on building
your first robot. The school district’s Community
Education program both encouraged the class and
helped us refine it. That’s why at the end of last
April, we found ourselves teaching a beginning
robotics class to eight families.
get Your
roBotics on!
By L. Paul Verhage
36 SERVO 12.2013
Post comments on this article at
www.servomagazine.com/index.php/
magazine/article/december2013_Verhage.
One of the goals at the Boise
Robotics Group (The BoRG) is to
teach folks how to make robots.
The BoRG's latest effort tapped
into the growing do-it-yourself
movement. We offered to teach
eight families how to makes
robots from the ground up
through the Boise School
District's Community Education.
This article describes what we
taught participants and some of
the lessons we learned ourselves.
