North Hills Students Resume SMART to Complete Software Foundations for the 2021-2022 School Year
By Vu Nguyen
November 18, 2021 - PITTSBURGH, PA - Students from North Hills area school district in Pittsburgh are back at it with the SMART Robotics Technician program for the 2021-2022 school year! This program is being run by our friends at the Will Allen Foundation.
Earlier this year, the students completed the Robotics Integration micro-certification course which took them through a scenario where a Robotics Technician would receive a robotics kit, checking through to make sure they've received the parts, checking each electrical component, and then assembling and testing the assembly. They then integrate a third-party vision system to the kit, and experience the troubleshooting steps that occur due to some (intended) conflicts with the hardware. This time, students continue on by adding in additional concepts via the Software Foundations micro-certification course. This course builds on top of Robotics Integration by having students learning about sensors, and then performing some decision making and tracking colors using the vision system.
A big part of the course focuses on the idea of Pseudocoding, where students must think through the steps involved in completing the challenges and write the "plan" or sequence involved needed to complete the challenge. This all happens prior to writing actual code.
We are very excited to see students back in person to continue on with their implementation of the SMART program. Good luck North Hills students!
Also, we'd like to extend a big THANK YOU to The Grable Foundation for the funding that allows us to continue training additional educators to implement the program across the Pittsburgh Region.