According to The Tech Edvocate, “By the time all of our students graduate in a few years or so, over half of the available jobs will be in the STEM field and a large chunk of the rest will require employees to have some STEM knowledge. When students are introduced to robotics in their school years, they can discover any interests and talents that they may have in this job market. Without the knowledge or access to robotics education, there’s no way for students to build interest in these fields. Without robotics education in public schools, who knows how many potential creators and innovators there are who were never given the resources to realize their potential.”

The CES formed a collaboration with one of our local schools to help bring hands-on lessons on robotics and coding to one of the poorest schools in the county.  The CES designed lessons on teaching students the importance of learning technology and how we use it in today’s workforce to spark conversations with the students.  The CES brings in 4-H Robotics curriculum along with Lego Robots so the students can learn by doing.  We do simple tasks together, so the classroom stays on pace but towards the end, the CES allows the students to become creative in how the code.  Other lessons are building Ecobots where the students can be as creative as they can to make a toothbrush move as a robot.  There are also coding lessons where students can learn the science behind how things work.  

At the conclusion of these lessons in the classroom, the CES and the teacher offer a Family SET Day where parents, grandparents, or caregivers come into the classrooms and the students become the teachers for their guest.  The students sit with the adults and they go over how to program robots and create codes.  It’s a fun and educational day where the adults learn from their kids.  Throughout the day, we heard the adults say, “I never knew how these things worked” and “My child is a tech whiz!”

100% of the adult participants loved the fact that their child was the teacher for the day.

100% of the adults learned something new that day.

85% of the students are interested in learning more about careers in science.