Hands-On, Minds-On: Bringing Engineering Design to High School Classrooms

Amazing Similarity

It is cool that the XBee module used to transmit the wind data from the turbine to my laptop is similar to the Arduino boards used in the teachbots and other creations.  In the photo to the left you see the insect I made from two servo motors and Arduino board on top.  The legs are coat hangers and the sonar sensor is not attached here.  The small clear plastic module encloses the XBee module.

Vickers Teaching Assignment

I met with the new principal this week and learned the tentative schedule of classes I teach:

Fall Semester
1st block - Plan
2nd block - Tech Design & Engineering Draw
3rd block - Technology Transfer
4th block - Physics (either virtual Virginia or Plato)

Spring Semester
1st block - Technology Transfer
2nd block - Plan
3rd block - DE Robotics
4th block - Technology Transfer

The division has decided to drop the Technology Foundations class and progress to statewide career pathways.

I have my VTEEA conference July 31- August 3rd.  It is my desire to have some open labs for robotics work before the school year starts.  Students should text or email me with what YOU would like to do.  I'm game for building a whole new robot, working on the Freesbie Thrower, assembling a FTC bot, or Teachbot using Arduino.  I am also open for the times you may want to meet and for how long.

JMU Content Academy 2013

In 4 short days the teachers from the various FIRST Robotics teams had made teachbots using Arduino Open Source boards and coding.  We gathered them in the hallway the last day.

 

 Notice the round robots have whiskers or sensors to let the device know it is hitting a wall. 
Coding was then used to give the robot another direction.  Near the end of the video you will see my insect robot wiggling around on the floor.

One of my first posts to LHS-TechEd Ning.

Free CADD software for my students

Students please refer to this link for your free software:  http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=or&id=9132&ic=12NQx5n4IF

Let me know how things wrk out.

Mr. Vickers

Posted by Ron Vickers on March 7, 2011 at 11:09pm

2nd Semester at Luray High

Hello my friends,

Ron Vickers schedule for Spring 2012 is as follows:
1st block - Planning (work with DE Robotics class and Mr. Carini
2nd block -Technology Transfer
3rd bloxck - Technology Foundations
4th block - Technology Foundations
Immediately after school at 3:20  I mentor FIRST team #3307 the Luray RoboDawgs (actually robodawgettes) and advise the  Luray TSA chapter.

Please refer to…
Continue

Posted by Ron Vickers on March 6, 2011 at 2:00pm

Robotics at LHS for Sponsorship Effort

F.I.R.S.T. Robotics at Luray High School

Luray High School opened its doors in the Fall of 2009.  Page County built two new schools in the county with the older buildings becoming middle schools.  The summer of 2009 Ron Vickers (a newly hired Technology Education teacher) attended JMU Content Academy in the Robotics concentration.  At this time the robotics program at LHS was begun with grant money from JMU’s Nick Swayne.  He sponsored over 5 different FRC teams to increase the First Lego Teams already I n place in the Shenandoah Valley.

Thru a small group of excited students the first ever Luray Robodawgs Team #3307 successfully designed, built and competed with a robot made by them.  Leas mentor, Ron Vickers was able to recruit the chemistry teacher to help.  Mr. Kevin Carini brought a different set of interested students and we grew from this point.  This Rookie Year was sponsored by grant funding from JMU for the required $6,000.00 .  The team went to the Chesapeake Regional in Baltimore Maryland.  They won the “Rookie Inspiration Award” for their efforts.

In 2010-2011 our 2^nd Season we grew to over 20 some students helping out.  We started getting interest from the Art, Business, Math, and Science departments.  Again this year we went to the Chesapeake Regionals.  Mr. Carini’s wife was having her first child the competition weekend and could not go with us.  Alas our robots had trouble moving the vinyl pool rings to the scoring rack, but all students involved remained highly motivated.  Students remained involved off season to keep learning.  The JMU grant of $5,000 paid the kit of parts and registration.  Luray Caverns sponsored the lodging costs for the students.  Several other local businesses donated smaller amounts that went into materials and supplies not included in the kit.  This included the parts to create a smaller climbing robot for that year’s challenge

Team #3307 worked throughout the off season trying to improve our chances at competitions.  We again were funded by grant from JMU for $5,000 and local business sponsors for much smaller amounts for our 3^rd season.  The challenge that year was to shoot foam basketball into asset of rims.  We found shooting a ball is much easier than picking one up off the playing surface.  Our robot was vey adept at making goals on our home practice field and did preform in Baltimore.  By know the FIRST robotics program at Luray High was firmly established to attract some of the brightest students in the school seeking to get accepted into engineering schools.  After consecutive JMU content teaching academies the mentors were much better trained and Kevin Carini developed a dual enrolled class with JMU in Robotics.  This initial class had 8 students enrolled.  This year the expectations and content was developed.

Last school year Mr. Carini left Luray to teach at another school and his replacement chemistry teacher agreed to chaperone the team on trips.    Our lead mentor, Mr. Vickers taught the JMU dual enrolled robotics class in the spring to continue strong growth in robotics to include the FTC challenge, Arduino coding and FRC design.  After Mr. Vickers attended his content area teacher conference VTEEA, a grant to start up a FTC team was done.  Rockwell/Collins awarded us with a $1,000.00 grant to purchase the erector type parts for the FTC robot that we can use over and over.  The idea was to recruit middle school teachers to mentor this team to provide a “junior varsity” team of sorts to improve students starting into FRC.  Freshmen (9^th graders) were encouraged to be on this team of 10.  Alas a mentor could not be found and Ron Vickers started Team #6140.  More information about FTC is found http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc/game .   This season goes from late summer to December enabled the FRC team starting 1^st Saturday in January to not be in conflict.  The FRTC team competed and this 4^th season developed a student population that had remained with the teams for their entire high school career.  Student in the robotics class have all selected technology careers with many of them being accepted into Virginia Tech’s engineering school.  Funding for this season was again thru JMU grant of $5,000.00.  Luray Caverns again sponsored the student motel costs.

This last season the students worked on marketing and branding the team better.  We now have our own Bulldog mascot image, banner, and other colored coded items.  Wrangle Jeanswear has sponsored the T-shirt cost the past couple of seasons so your team can be dresses appropriately during the season.  Sponsoring the robotics efforts at Luray High has remained a challenge each year.  Without the grant funding from JMU the programs would never have been possible.  Notification was received during the summer a grant for next year (2013-2014) was not obtained.  Mentors and student team members are at a loss.  We feel like local sponsorships will not be adequate to field a team this school year.

We invite you to look at the team webpage http://www.lhs-first.ning.com .  Please contact our lead mentor for more information.

All sponsors are given recognition as much as we can on the T-shirts, robot itself, and local publications.  The school will provide a donation letter for tax purposes.  Hope to hear from you!

Luray High School

Ron Vickers, Technology Education Teacher

Mentoring:  FRC Team #3307 and FTC Team# 6140 Luray Robodawgs.

243 Bulldog Dr.

Luray, VA  22835

(office) (540) 743-3800

Vickers cell (540) 860-2807

Or  rvickers@pagecounty.k12.va.us

From original Ning. Old Photos are next.

Welcome Back to School

Starting this Fall semester, and going into the winter my schedule is as follows:

1st block - Technology Transfer - a second year design course

2nd block - Technical Drawing & Design - meets in the classroom with individual computers

lunch

3rd block - Technology Foundations

4th block - Planning



My summer has been full with two weeks of learning more about Robotics at James Madison University, completing my term as President of the Virginia Technology… Continue

Posted by Ron Vickers on August 25, 2010 at 10:00am

When I first introduced myself. Tribute to Dave Ponn.

Introduction of Mr. Ron Vickers

Hello to all of my students and their parents! I have taught Technology Education at Rappahannock County High School for 25 years until the new Luray High School was built this year. In my first year here, I have started a new TSA chapter and formed a First Robotics team #3307.

Future posts will contain the syllabus for each class including certain handouts and study guides. Please check this site often.

I may be… Continue

Posted by Ron Vickers on August 25, 2010 at 10:09am

One of my first posts to LHS-TechEd.ning.com

Free CADD software for my students

Students please refer to this link for your free software:  http://students.autodesk.com/?nd=or&id=9132&ic=12NQx5n4IF

Let me know how things work out.

Mr. Vickers

Posted by Ron Vickers on March 7, 2011 at 11:09pm

2nd Semester at Luray High

Hello my friends,

Ron Vickers schedule for Spring 2012 is as follows:
1st block - Planning (work with DE Robotics class and Mr. Carini
2nd block -Technology Transfer
3rd bloxck - Technology Foundations
4th block - Technology Foundations
Immediately after school at 3:20  I mentor FIRST team #3307 the Luray RoboDawgs (actually robodawgettes) and advise the  Luray TSA chapter.

Please refer to…
Continue

Posted by Ron Vickers on March 6, 2011 at 2:00pm

SHOUT OUT to all our past sponsors

4th Season - Ultimate Ascent 

JMU Grant - $5.000.00 for the 4th year in a row!

 
Emco Enterprises, Inc. for a company grant of $1,250.00

 Lantz Construction of Broadway for a generous donation.

 For the second year in a row VF Jeanswear has donated our team T-shirts.

3rd Season - Rebound Rumble

JMU Grant- $5,000.00

Luray Caverns -gave us funds for motel rooms at the contest.  Thank You John Graves for this very important part of our budget.




Tom's Auto Repair set us another check this year.  Thanks!
Luray Import Services. Inc. supplied us with a generous donation at the exact right time!
Valley Eye Clinic
Missy Deibert, was our first local sponsor for the 3rd year in a row.  We received a second donation today.
 
Valley Automation, Inc.  is again assisting us with contribution and mentoring.

 VF Jeanswearis our newest sponsor.  They are providing the T-shirts for our team.  Thank you for the shirts and printing costs.

1st and 2nd Seasons - Breakaway then Logo Motion.
 

Our rookie year we received a $6,000.00 grant thru JMU to get started.  This was followed up the second year with the necessary $5,000.00   Several local business made donations as we learned how to market our team and seek out help.

A new effort to update this blog.

Hello World,  I noticed I had too many web sites to keep up with so I will discontinue to use the Nings.  Recall there was lhs-first.ning.com and  lhs-teched.ning.com   The main FIRST Robotics news is now available from a Facebook Page  Search for LHS Robodawgs! for the FRC Team #3307 and LHS Robodawg FTC for Team #6140.

This blog site will be my main school news.  If other topics arise like a "Wind Energy"need, I'll link the specific site to this blog.

Now for the long process of moving lots of Ning data ( do not really want to lose all that data) to this blog.....

Cheers,
Ron Vickers