Robotec

Robotec was a social project we did in collaboration with the Tecnológico de Monterrey where we gave weekly lessons to children from low-income families using Lego Mindstorms. We taught the children how to build their robots, the concepts behind each of the components and how to use the Lego Mindstorms software to program them. After giving the lessons for a semester we organized an internal competition which challenges so that the children could apply the things we taught them. It was overall an amazing experience and made me really want to do something like this again.

The Kids

The kids were students from the public school “Escuela Secundaria Diurna República de Panama Número 77”. Their ages ranged from 12 to 14 years old. They were really great kids and full of energy. I also feel like they were quite smart.

I remember the first lesson we imparted where we let them build the robots at first they were struggling a bit following instructions but quickly got the hang of it. They are incredibly smart and talented and I consider myself very lucky for having taught such a nice group.

The Lessons

Preparing the lessons was also quite a challenge. We wanted to make them fun and engaging using fun dynamics the help the kids learn. We didn’t really have a lot of time given how we only gave 1  2 hour lesson per week, so we had to find the a balance between activities and theory. The kids were always super cooperative and were really eager to learn something new or maybe we somehow got it right.

I have to give a lot of credit to our supervisor Jéssica Merchand because this project was completely out of her area of expertise but still was able to really take this project off and give a great experience to the kids.

Also, my classmate Carlos Daniel Monteros a great partner when preparing and carrying out the lessons. He already had experience with this type of project so he really saved us time. I believe we made a great time throughout the semester and would gladly work with him again.

The Competition

The semester finally came to an end. We wanted to make a challenge that would make the kids think in a creative way and let them have fun but at the same time that it wouldn’t create a stressful environment.  We settled for a relaxed sumo competition. First we let the kids program their robots anyway they liked and then gave them time to modify them. Everyone had fun watching the sumo fights and each round the robots starting to become more complex as the children innovated over their designs. It was amazing to see the kids’ creativity when designing their robots.