Introducing the RoboCo Digital Robotics Summer Camp, an all-digital week-long summer camp experience! Through guided digital camp sessions, campers will learn about robotics, critical thinking, and creativity using RoboCo, the upcoming PC digital robotics kit developed by industry-leading educational game studio Filament Games. Read on below to learn how you can enroll in our pilot program for no cost!

RoboCo Launch Trailer

About the Camp:

Sample activities:

– Experiment with gear ratios to build a superior climbing bot

– Learn about different motor types and properties like torque while designing a robot that can smash a pinata

– Go head-to-head with other campers in timed trials to see who can complete challenges the fastest

– Explore the iterative engineering design process as your robots fail hilariously

– Experience engineering constraints first-hand as you avoid causing collateral damage to hapless humans

– Win prizes for designing the most elegant dancing robot

Supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, RoboCo is a PC digital robotics kit focused on fostering STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) and robotics interest in young learners. As they form hypotheses and build robots to conquer tricky challenges, campers will learn about robotics fundamentals and develop critical future-ready skills like creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration.

Campers will be able to build any robot they can imagine, drawing from an expansive variety of parts to bring the machines of their dreams to life. As we tinker and experiment, we’ll hook up controls, customize how our robots move and operate, and even add fun cosmetics like googly eyes and hats to give them a little personality!

About the Instructor:

Camp Instructor and Filament Games CEO Dan White believes that good gameplay and good learning are complementary rather than oppositional forces. An alumnus of Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Dan earned an M.S. in Education Technology under seminal learning game scholars Drs. Kurt Squire and James Paul Gee. Prior to founding Filament, Dan worked as a teacher, an instructional designer, and a game developer. Dan’s passions include learning games, sustainability, mindfulness, and modernizing institutional education.

Learn more about Dan’s philosophy on experimentation and the power of constructive failure for learning:

Course Description:

Design, build, and play! Campers at the RoboCo Digital Robotics Summer Camp will log in via Google Hangouts and explore a guided curriculum with Filament Games CEO Dan White, a 15 year veteran of the learning games industry with a Masters in Education Technology from UW-Madison. Using open-ended play in the Sandbox mode and objective-based play in Challenge mode, campers will experience a comprehensive curriculum that emphasizes experimentation, constructive (and often hilarious) failure, iteration, and success! At the end of the course, campers will have developed their understanding of fundamental robotics and strengthened their grasp of the 4C’s of future-ready skills – creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration!

Learning Outcomes

NGSS

• Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
• Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
• Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
• Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
• Learn about torque, motors, and gear ratios

Benchmarks for Science Literacy

• Engineers, architects, and others who engage in design and technology use scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. They also usually have to take human values and limitations into account.
• Systems fail because they have faulty or poorly matched parts, are used in ways that exceed what was intended by the design, or were poorly designed to begin with.
• Scientific laws, engineering principles, properties of materials, and construction techniques must be taken into account when designing engineering solutions to problems.

ISTE Standards for Students

• Students know and use a deliberate design process for generating ideas, testing theories, creating innovative artifacts or solving authentic problems.
• Students develop, test and refine prototypes as part of a cyclical design process.
• Students exhibit a tolerance for ambiguity, perseverance and the capacity to work with open-ended problems.

Let’s build some robots!

Contact us today using the form below and let us know which of this pilot program’s camp sessions would work for your summer schedule – one of our customer support specialists will get in touch with more information. We can’t wait to see you online!