What’s a great way to get kids ages 1-99 excited about STEM? Robots! With National Robotics Week upon us, it’s a great opportunity to leverage these fascinating machines to help promote learning and career paths in STEM.
Why Robots?
Robots are naturally fun and spark curiosity. They allow for play and building while providing a bridge to inspire students to pursue more of the technology and engineering behind what makes a robot work, such as coding. Robots can actually inspire multiple pathways into engineering, as there is a need for both mechanics and computer science to make robots a success. This article from The Knowledge Hub also highlights some out-of-the-box benefits that robots can provide in early education, such as language development, teamwork, social skills, and a futuristic mindset.
What is National Robotics Week?
For the 2023 year, National Robotics Week is celebrated the 8th-16th of April. The mission of National Robotics Week is simple — to inspire students in robotics and STEM-related fields and to share the excitement of robotics with audiences of all ages. The inspiration behind this week is to celebrate the robotics industry and learn how exciting robots can be with the help of robotics-themed events, activities, and media. The movement seeks to provide resources in robotics and STEM, allowing everyone to experience the thrill of robotics. Few fields combine opportunities for engineering, creative, and problem solving skills in one place.
How to Celebrate National Robotics Week
Want to get involved with celebrating robotics and pre-university STEM education? The National Robotics Week website is a great place to start. They provide a list of 64 robotics-related events across the United States for this time period. All event listings provide a description of the event and information to help you register or attend. They also have a comprehensive page of resources to help you and your pre-university students get involved with robotics. These resources include STEM lessons, games, activities, and more. These resources can be filtered by age and type to help you find one that’s right for you. You can also download a media kit to help promote this week.
Looking for the best robotics-themed material for your STEM students or classrooms? Check out this list from Common Sense Education providing apps and websites for project-based inspiration, lessons, and coding interfaces to bring your classroom robots to life. The content is broken down into age and price range, and you can even see a review of each listed resource as well.
Additionally, IEEE and TryEngineering have some great resources for pre-university education in robotics. Be sure to check out the IEEE Robots page, where you can find a variety of robotics-themed resources such as lesson plans, activities, and links to dozens of robots. From there, you can also link to the page for IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. This IEEE Society strives for the advancement of the theory and practice of robotics and automation engineering and science and of the allied arts and sciences. Looking for a robotics-themed lesson plan? Why not try Build Your Own Robot Arm, where students design and build a working robotic arm from a set of everyday items with a goal of having the arm be able to pick up a cup. Looking for inspiration to help motivate pre-university students in robotics at the volunteer level? Check out this Volunteer Spotlight, where IEEE Volunteer Hari Vishnu discusses how robotics can make a difference in helping to save our oceans and planet, or this Program Spotlight for the Ottawa Robotics Competition that not only discusses not only a robotics competition but also how to motivate and train leaders and volunteers in this space.