I attended the Junior Botball Challenge Training in Boise with a colleague yesterday. We were attending this training as part of a grant through the Idaho STEM Action Center (https://stem.idaho.gov/). The grant covered our time and travel to the training, seven robotics kits, seven sets of mats, and the curriculum resources for students to learn C programming while completing robotics challenges. I had no previous knowledge of the Junior Botball Challenge but was thoroughly impressed by the robotics kits and the learning goals for the students. In addition, the ease of use as an educator with the program and the robot itself was great for beginners but also could challenge more experienced users.
During the first part of the training, we built our first robot. The intention of the Junior Botball Challenge (https://www.juniorbotballchallenge.org/) is to focus on students learning to program using C language and receiving the immediate feedback from the hands-on use of a robot. While we built our robot, students will typically only by using pre-built robots and add on parts to perform the necessary task for various challenges. Two things struck me about the program. I like both the emphasis on programming and using C language instead of a drag and drop (GUI) interface.
I look forward to getting started with students, which will be after the next five robots are built.
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