Iowa Educators Can Be Early Adopters of the Parallax S3 Robot!

That’s right - Iowa educators have access to the new S3 Robot before the rest of the country! In 2014 Parallax (www.parallax.com) and the Iowa Keystone Area Education Agency partnered for two successful Educator’s Courses with over 50 teachers from Dubuque and Elkader using the S2 Robot (read about it here: Parallax - S2 Robots ). This year we are returning with our S3 Robot and the new Google Blockly tool for programming!

Ken Gracey, Parallax CEO and California Career Technology Education (CTE) credentialed teacher. Mr. Gracey has developed his career in educational robotics and shares his enthusiasm and experiences with students.

What is the S3 Robot? The S3 Robot is a robotic learning platform for STEM education using coding, logical thinking, competition, electronic sensing and problem solving. The S3 Robot is a one-piece fully-integrated robot with infrared sensors for obstacle avoidance, line following sensors, a microphone, speaker, light sensors, Sharpie pen port, LEDs and precision motor control system. The S3 follows the very successful S2 design but with key improvements around USB-rechargeable Li-On batteries, an exposed “hacker port” for ultrasonic sensors and RF modules and Google’s popular “Blockly” tool for programming. The S3 is specifically designed as a one-piece robot to avoid loss of components and work effectively for daily 45-minute class session. Students who program a robot like the S3 will develop transferable experience for career technology education (CTE) interests, engineering and science careers. Most importantly, teachers have an opportunity to share something the students are interested in doing which in turn creates career interests.

Workshop Details:
• Bring a Windows or Mac laptop with USB programming ports. Be sure to have administrative access to the Blockly S3 programming environment.
• Any educator in Elementary, Middle School and High School may attend. Most common educators include those from Science, Math, Physics and Programming Courses.
• Lunchtime presentations will include demonstrations of the next steps in robotics education (the popular Boe-Bot, Arduino Shield Bot, and ActivityBot). One break will include a drone flight with the ELEV-8 v3, too.

What you will learn:
• Programming with the Google Blocky. This includes logical visual coding, variables and conditions, testing and using a variety of sensors. Graphical programming has proven to be an effective.
• How the S3 Robot works during a complete tear-down which exposes the Parallax Propeller Multicore, all electronics and sensing systems.
• How to access and apply Parallax’s S3 Educational Resources (lesson plans, rubrics, standards correlations, teacher’s guides).
• Logistics of running a course in your classroom, including competitions, scaffolding, and materials management.

This workshop is free! You will receive a new S3 Robot to take with at the end of the day.

Registration closes 3/1/18.

Lunch will be on your own but time is short so you may want to bring a sack lunch.

Instructor: Ken Gracey, CEO of Parallax, Inc.
Contact: Derek Casillas, dcasillas@mbaea.org, 563-344-6464 for more info
Date: 3/22/18
Time: 8:30 - 3:30, lunch on your own
Location: Mississippi Bend AEA, Bettendorf