Outreach Activities
Maja J Matarić
I am strongly committed to making robotics accessible to students of
all ages. In outreach, my emphasis is on pre-university, K-12
students (girls in particular), especially in the middle-school age
group, with a goal of eventually introducing robotics as early as
elementary school. I believe that hands-on experiential learning
through the use of robotics as a tool and topic is a great way for
students to gain interest and knowledge in STEM (science, technology,
engineering and math).
The following are my recent and ongoing outreach activities:
A free robotics programming workbook with illustrated exercises
and solutions, available on the web: http://roboticsprimer.sourceforge.net/workbook. The
workbook exercises are designed for the low-cost iRobot Create and Roomba platforms.
The workbook provides three different programming environments and a
variety of add-on sensor options. The workbook is a stand-alone
generally accessible resource for students at all levels (university
and K-12), educators (university and K-12) and hobbyists. It is
written to dovetail with my "The Robotics Primer"
textbook for the same audience, available from MIT Press.
NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) supplement grant. In
collaboration with two LA middle school teachers we developed
age-appropriate and standards-relevant curricular materials for a 6th
grade hands-on robotics course and an 8th grade robotics-based science
class. All materials are found
here. We also developed a resource
web site for K-12 teachers.
USC Neighborhood Outreach Grant for "Hands-on
Robotics for Enhancing Middle-School STEM Education and Increasing
Participation of Under-Represented Students". This project was a
partnership with Foshay Learning Center during July 2005-June 2006; it
involved school visits, teacher training, and providing permanent
resources (robot kits and lesson plans) for the school's in-class and
after-class robotics programs. Look here
for more information. Here
is a nice article about the program.
USC Neighborhood Outreach Grant for "Hands-on
Robotics for Enhancing Elementary-School STEM Education and Increasing
Participation of Under-Represented Students". This project is a
partnership with St. Agnes Elementary School, started in July
2006. Look here
for more information.
NSF Research Experience for Teachers (RET) supplement grant. In
collaboration with the South Pasadena Educational Foundation (SPEF)
and the South Pasadena School District, and working with an elementray
school teacher and a middle school science teacher, we are developing
a month-long summer robotics course for 5th-7th graders and training the
teachers to conduct the course starting in Summer 2008 and make it an
annual offering. The goal is to then transition the material from the
summer courses into year-long clubs and into in-class curricular
materials. The course will use the textbook described above and LEGO
Mindstorm NXT kits. (South Pasadena Review article about the program.)
My Interaction
Lab maintains a web site with free materials and links for K-12
robotics courses,
here.
The following are my publications in the area of outreach:
Maja J. Matarić, Juan Fasola, and David J. Feil-Seifer, "Robotics
as a tool for immersive, hands-on freshmen engineering instruction",
Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
Annual Conference & Exposition Pittsburgh, PA, Jul 2008. [PDF]
Maja J Matarić, Nathan Koenig, and David Feil-Seifer,
"Materials for Enabling Hands-On Robotics and STEM Education", AAAI
Spring Symposium on Robots and Robot Venues: Resources for AI
Education, Palo Alto, CA, Mar 2007. [PDF]
Maja J Matarić, "Robotics Education for All Ages",
Proceedings, AAAI Spring Symposium on Accessible, Hands-on AI and
Robotics Education, Palo Alto, CA, Mar 22-24, 2004. [PDF]
I welcome helpful suggestions and new outreach opportunities.
Go to Maja's home page.
Go to the Interaction Lab home page.
Mail comments to webmaster@robotics.usc.edu.
