After the success of our summer program, Robotika, we decided we wanted to continue teaching the next generation. We started an after school program, in partnership with the Milpitas Community Educational Endowment, to teach children about STEM and the joy of robotics. The program, Mechanum, was a look into programming and robotics. It allowed students to learn and explore. The program lasted 12 weeks, from September to December, and ended with a competition between the robots the students had built.
We continued teaching students with our second 12-week program, SySTEMatic. We were supposed to teach students about circuitry, programming, and building useless boxes. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have shifted the class online. This shift also required us to change our lesson plan, as it was originally much more hands-on. However, students are now going to be learning how to code in Java and Robocode. They will eventually be competing against each other in a mini coding competition. This gives students an opportunity to learn some of what we originally promised online.
Written by Aishah Jafferey (2019-2020 SySTEMatic Co-Head)