As a brief introduction; I am a technology teacher at a private school in Pennsylvania and I teach classes ranging from programming to film making. Robotics have become an interest of mine as I've learned to use Arduino microcontrollers:
Luck for me I've had the opportunity to implement this passion for robotics in the classroom as a part of my programming classes. Robotics have also taken up a large part of my school life as I just finished the year coaching a very successful First Lego League team and will be embarking on setting up a First Tech Challenge robotics program for my high school students next year. The robot, you can say, is what "sustains me" (albeit poorly 
). Below is a robot I worked on with a student during the Raspberry Pi educator's road test for element14.com:
When I was selected for the "Teacher's Pet" road test I had the option of picking an Arduino kit or a Raspberry Pi kit. Being the Arduino enthusiast that I am I choose the prior option (Arduino kit) thinking that this would allow me to hit the ground running due to my hobby experience.
Given the prompt for this challenge "Teacher's Pet" I had to dig deep for meaning. So...this is my real pet, Tara:
She is the ultimate cat. If you want to see Tara in action:
The qualities of Tara are the following:
- She is fun
- She likes to follow me and complain about the fact that she can't go outside
- I find her quite cool and I spend a ridiculous amount of time with her
- She teaches me about "responsibility." This is because I have to sustain another life form by feeding her organic pet food and filtrating her water. I do this all because I think it makes her fur shiny
In all ways she is a "Teacher's Pet"
So what does she have in common with the following:
The picture above is what element14.com sent me for this educator's road test; a mash up of equipment I will write about during the course of the following weeks. Perhaps, over a beverage...sometimes staring at a sunset....other times over breakfast....
When the main part of this lifeless package is assembled the Parallax Robotics Kit rises like a Phoenix :
This Parallax robot from now on, I'll call the "Tara-Bot" and it possesses the following qualities:
- It is very fun to work with
- It has a variety of sensors allowing it to do things. Potentially, it could follow me around via infrared sensors
- In a short time the robotics kit has helped me relearn Arduino programming and also, driven me to learn about MATLAB and Simulink technical computing
- It is a motivational/educational tool for getting me to learn about robotics, in a sense, this "Tara Bot" is sustaining me through "professional development." How ironic that the tables are now turned!
The similarities are stunning:
Exactly! That is me tickling Tara's whiskers and also me tickling the Tara-Bot's "whiskers." In one case she lets off a little pur sound in the other a red LED lights up.
I've decided to approach this road test, "Teacher's Pet" challenge, as a comprehensive documentation for how I am using the equipment sent to me to learn more about programming from a teacher's perspective. This is because my creativity is being pushed as I attempt to link the Arduino robot to MATLAB and Simulink and then how I could use this in a classroom. MATLAB and Simulink are technical computing software used for visualizing data; this is software which I knew absolutely nothing about prior to this road test; and learning this stuff has taken me a lot of time. Nonetheless, it has become something i enjoy, therefore the evolution of the "Tara Bot" fits the bill as a "teachers pet." If only it could cook me eggs in the morning (not that the real Tara does either)....
A teacher's pet also has connotations as a teacher's best student. For some there is also a connotation as a "brown nosing student," but we won't consider this as a part of my project's definition. Accordingly, I will attempt to use this robotics kit as a tool for teaching programming to my strongest students during upcoming summer camps. Keep in mind that school has already been wrapped up for the year. My next blog post will focus on the activity sequence for the Parallax robot and also how I went about learning the basics of MATLAB and Simulink technical computing software. Furthermore, what interesting things I have achieved thus far with the software and sensors provided by element14.com.