|
Dear Middle School Teacher, Robot Diaries is a program of the Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab originally funded thanks to a gift from the Heinz Endowments here in Pittsburgh. We were very interested in how technology and craft materials can be combined to create activities and curricula that meet important goals: engaging girls and other middle school students to use technology creatively, inspiring students to feel empowered about technology in their lives, and meeting learning standards while inspiring cross-disciplinary activities. Our early technology design, curriculum design, and testing has involved many groups, from Mount Lebanon Public Library and C-MITES to Sarah Heinz House, Falk School, and the PALS home schooling group. We are very excited to announce that, due to the early success of Robot Diaries, the National Science Foundation has just informed us that they are funding a major application of our program to the public school system to understand how our creative technology program can empower teachers in the classroom. We owe a large thanks to Linda Hippert at AIU for supporting the initial National Science Foundation proposal; without AIU's support, we would never have received this major recognition from the National Science Foundation. We have decided to focus on AIU and IU1 as our first collaborators in this three-year experiment, as we find effective ways to introduce the technology and to help teachers transform the technology into truly effective classroom experiences. We will then also be holding workshops where the teachers will, together with us, disseminate the results to schools throughout our western Pennsylvania region. The first task we now face involves selecting teachers who are willing and excited to be part of Robot Diaries starting this spring. The funding provided by the National Science Foundation enables us to offer payment for collaborating teachers during the summer. The program as a whole depends on teachers who are willing to learn about Robot Diaries technologies and programs, and then design ways in which they can incorporate the material effectively into their classroom. We think that Robot Diaries is a good match for science class; however we are open to working with teachers in other subject areas as well. We also welcome collaborations between teachers of different subject areas. The expected time commitments for teachers are outlined below:
We have collected several background documents, including:
We do hope you are interested in Robot Diaries. If you are, please fill out this short application form and return it to Dror Yaron, dror at cmu.edu by May 7th, 2010. We will be reviewing all applications received and will then potentially contact you for a brief phone conversation follow-up. Feel free to contact us with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you! Sincerely, Illah Nourbakhsh
Emily Hamner
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|