I’ll write about this then…

Well I published that above on Feb 21 2014 and now its May 19 2014!  I am just now taking the time to right about how things went.  It was a busy semester.  So, I’ll just go right into it.

So, as part of CS 880 (Multi-Robotics) we volunteered at one of three underprivileged middle schools (initially 4 but one of them pulled out) Jefferson Houston, Kramer and TranSTEM Academy (which is I think is Cardoza) to teach robotics and prepare a team to enter the Botball competition.  I got to volunteer at Kramer Middle school, since while at the initial Botball workshop I worked with that middle school teacher and student.  At Kramer Middle school I worked with Jesse Hatfield (another PhD student that was in CS880).

Things that were interesting about Kramer:

1. “99% Black and 1% mixed race” (http://profiles.dcps.dc.gov/Kramer+Middle+School).  The first time I went to the school one of the students was like “Look there’s a white guy!”.

2. The students wear a uniform White shirt and black/dark blue khakis.  I didn’t notice this until about the third time I went.  Interesting, I never had to wear a uniform and I went to public school in middle school…

3. They separated the classes by gender.

So, back to botball…  Our primary contact teacher at Kramer was Ms. Jefferson, however, later it became Ms. Daniels.  Our first day there we enter Ms. Daniels class room and the kids were wild.  Ms. Daniels is trying to settle the kids down, but to no avail.  So, she ignores them and asks us present!  So, in shock (neither Jesse or I expected to have to present Botball to the entire class of like 25 students) I pull out my laptop and get a video ready.  I connect it to the projector and start the Botball movie.  All of a sudden the room goes silent!  I could hardly believe it.  The movie is only 3 minutes and as soon as its over it is back to chaos.  Everyone is asking questions and wants to know why we are here, what other things can robots do, can we make robots that play football, etc…  So, we try and answer some of the questions and we finally ask Ms. Daniels where the Botball team is and where we are to meet.  Because there was no way could teach all 25 students robotics.