L1 Robotics: (Age 9 to 13): From 3:15 till 4.30 pm
Our Level 1 (L1) Course is the ‘LEARN’ phase. This course introduces student to robotics concepts systematically and thoroughly. They get to practice and code on a wide variety of robots, mainly one type per month. Learning objectives are aligned to BC ADST curriculum and goes well beyond it in terms of Robotics and STEM growth.
Our L1 Robotics course includes students working on various pre-built robots helping them understand robot mechanics, sensors and motors and overall design of various robots. There are months diving into electronics and circuitry to see how things work at a low level by using safe and easy-to-use snap-like circuits. During the ‘build’ months students construct their own robots using kits, and bringing their builds to life with programming and testing. A lot of our robots use micro:bits as the brain of the robot, these are very intuitive chipsets with built in LED grids, microphones, speakers, gyroscope, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and more.
Our course teaches robotic programming in a diverse and thorough manner, since each robot has its own unique approach to get it programmed and operational (some drive like a vehicle, some rotate to specific positions, some use unique sensors, some recreate sustainable equipment, some recreate industrial equipment, some do all, etc.). The programming varies each month, based on comfort level, project, particular robot, and task
Examples of day-to-day activities include programming a robotic hand to grab objects with five fingers, programming a drawing robot that uses real paper and markers to draw shapes or pictures, programming a vehicle robot to traverse mazes, or program a creature-like robot to walk on four legs.
BC ADST curriculum can be found here. Total course duration is around 80 hours and close to half of that is optional at home assignments.
Key Modules:
- Module 1: Fundamentals: Students gain a historic foundational understanding of both hardware and software portions of Robots. Big Ideas (key concepts) in robotics.
- Module 2: Navigation: Foundational concepts/theory of Robot programming and attaining precision in movements. Robot math and key math topics necessary.
- Module 3: Sensors: Various sensors robots use and adjust actions based on those.
- Module 4: Electronics basics, circuits, breadboarding & micro bits & build micro:bit based robots.
- Module 5: Control: Complex logic portions in processing input and programming for more intelligent decisions. The user will learn to include sensor feedback, popular topics like line following, obstacle avoidance, maze solving etc. with robots.
- Module 6: Power Technology & Introduction to Mechatronics. Uses of power technology, Renewable and non-renewable sources of energy. Conversion and transmission of energy, kinetic and potential energy, effect of mass and inertia on speed and distance.
- Module 7: Ethics and Humanism aspects of Robotics.
L1 Coding – Python: (Age 9 to 13): 4:30 PM to 5:45 PM
This is an introductory and comprehensive course on Computer Programming. This course is focused on Computer Programming which includes both theory and learning via projects. This starts off with programming concepts and proceed as a regular python course. Python is a very powerful, industry strength programming language that is an extremely valuable skill to have. The objective is to learn just one language deeply which will enable the students to learn any programming language by themselves in future (Java, C, C++ or even the ones not invented yet!). This course acts as a foundation (mandatory) course for all higher level, Level 2 & Level 3 courses. So, we focus solely on the programming language of Python.
The course is offered In-Person at our center OR online. Either of them are led by instructor with small classes sizes (12 in case of in person and 8 in case of online). As for curriculum, BC ADST curriculum is covered and goes beyond. BC ADST curriculum can be found here.
Key Modules:
- Module 1: Introduction to Python: This module introduces the text-based programming language of Python. The module covers Python IDEs, syntax, data structures, formatting & error handling. Modifying programs in python.
- Module 2: Complex functions and programming technics. Review of ‘big ideas’ and computational thinking approach. Simple projects that practice these concepts and team projects. Students create algorithms, flowcharts & documentation and peer review these artifacts.
- Module 3: Introduction to testing, debugging methodology. Do’s and Don’ts in testing and debugging. Students are introduced to the idea of working as a team to achieve larger coding projects, modularizing, defining roles and responsibilities, interfaces etc.
- Module 4: Projects involving Python. Concepts like object-oriented programming in Python. Classes and Inheritance.
- Module 5: Review of Python standard libraries. Projects involving the use of these.
- Module 6: Advanced Concepts in Python: Artificial Intelligence routines in Python, Micro Python for Internet of Things (IoT) programming etc.
All our Level 0 and Level 1 courses are available in-person at various schools and community centers, our center at Cloverdale and online.
