As I finish my last course, EDU772: Coding II: Introduction to Robotics and Microcontrollers, to earn my Masters of Ed with a Tech Specialist Endorsement, it's nice to reflect on all of the new skills I am walking away with. Before I started this program with Dominican, I was interested in technology in education, but I only had surface level knowledge from the mindset of a math teacher. Two years later, I know how to find great tech resources, network with other technology advocates, how to ethically and legally run a technology department, as well as ideas for teaching coding and robotics courses. I was nervous about doing my grad school through an entirely online platform, but I'm happy to say I learned a lot.
One thing that I learned from EDU772 is that teaching robotics and computer science to students sounds a lot more challenging than it really is. After getting just two courses worth of exposure to coding and robotics, I feel much more confident that I could figure out how to teach a class if I spent more time planning. There is already a robotics class at my school that students take as an elective for one quarter, and I doubt they get too much more in-depth than what we covered in this course since it's only nine weeks. The key to learning and gaining confidence in robotics/programming is exposure and experience. The more you do it, things start to click, and then you can keep building your tool box from there. I feel like I've always been willing to try out technology in my classroom, and now I'm interested to see how I can incorporate programming into my math curriculum.
Given the fact that my school already has a robotics course and several robotics clubs, I feel like what I could do most to implement what I've learned in this class is to work with those robotics teachers to find ways to relate it to those students' math curriculum. There is a lot of math involved in programming, such as angles of rotation or other geometric transformations, and I'd be interested to see if the computer science teachers could sit down with the math teachers to figure out how to connect the two courses. One day this year I walked into a robotics class and they were using proportions. Students are always asking why they need to learn the math they are being taught, so it is really helpful to make these connections to other things they are interested in as much as possible. I am really fortunate to work in a STEM focused school that encourages us to get creative in incorporating STEM into our curriculum. Next year will be my second year at the school, and I'm excited to start the year with all of this new knowledge to bring into my classroom.
