2009 - Middle School Academy - June 20th
Coordinator: Daniel Vincent

Inspired will be hosting 3 Middle School Robotics Academies this year.
The academies will be held on Lamar University’s campus.
There will be the main Robotics session, and 2 additional sessions: Scratch and Website building.

This years Middle School Partnership: Woodrow Wilson

Personal Note:
This is my first time Coordinating an event!
I'm so excited!
--Daniel Vincent

Inspired/Stairstep Participants
Daniel Vincent(Coordinator)
Kelley Lester
Vanessa Brown
Kasey Doss
Cynthia Willis
Ric Guidry
Demetrius Taylor
Valerie Juarez
Kelli Hall
Kelly Harbour

Schedule and ToDo List need to be amended
This is a session academy schedule derived from previous academies:
8:30 – 9:00 Registration
9:00 – 9:30 Opening Session
Group A Group B
9:30 – 11:25 Robotics Scratch / Web Lab
11:25 – 12:20 Lunch Lunch
12:20 – 2:15 Scratch / Web Lab Robotics
2:15 – 2:30 Finish Journals Finish Journals
2:30 – 3:00 Closing Session

To Do List

1. Keep track of all students attending the academy. If this is not possibly,
make sure you record their information after the academy. Each student needs a
number for all the paperwork, and we can not have any repeating numbers, so each\\ academy will build on the previous one.
2. Souvenir bags need to include folders with materials and a pen.
3. Folders need to be numbered and include:
a. Tomorrow’s Jobs flyers
b. Computer Science purple flyers
c. Computer Science and Computer Information Systems course listings
d. High School Academy flyer
e. INSPIRED and STAIRSTEP flyers
f. Middle School computing information flyer
g. Weblab handout
h. Numbered Questionnaire
i. Numbered Robotics Questions
j. Numbered Scratch Questions
k. Numbered Weblab Questions
l. Academy Schedule
4. Prepare name tags and sign in sheets for registration.
5. Make sure all participants are coming and are prepared.
6. Lab 215 needs to have student accounts with Scratch installed, always double check.
7. Lab 215 also needs to have the web templates and files installed on each account.
8. Charge robots and make sure there are enough built in the correct form (maze).
9. Charge laptops and make sure they can all be used properly (without admin rights).
10. All workshops need to have a designated presenter, make sure they are prepared.
11. Designate someone to take pictures of the students. We will later upload these so the students can use them for their webpages.
12. Line up a computer and projector to use in lab 215.
13. Prepare certificates for students. This is the basics. An improved and more detailed list is provided below.

Other to-do:
Academy Files
Demographic Sheet
MSA Forms
Web Lab Handout

I think the academies on Saturdays start too early, but that just may be because I'm not exactly a morning person. I do realize that the later we start the later we’ll be here and I suppose it’s better to start early. I think all and all this academy when pretty well. My group was having trouble with their nxt robot. It wasn't driving straight. At the end of lunch we got the robot to work with help from Demetrius. In the end they got a different bot and that one's sensor was plugged in wrong. They did pretty good on the web lab and scratch though. I still think the assigned group leader worked better than trying to be all over the place. Still I tried to help anyone who needed it (if there group leader was busy).

     --Vanessa B. 

This was my secound middle school academy to participate in, had a lot of fun doing it. I help Daniel in giving the Lego NXT robotics presentation, and also looked after Kelli's kids during her web lab presentation software needed for the MSA: Lego NXT Frontpage Scratch

     --Demetrius T.

This MSA was a lot of fun. We ended up with 21 kids from various schools. It seemed much easier to prepare since we had the last MSA only two weeks earlier, and the HSA a week earlier. I'm wondering if we should start going to the schools to hand out the applications ourselves. I've noticed some of these schools aren't getting to the kids early enough. Maybe going to our Partner school to do a road show/application hand out would help? I have graded some of the questionnaires and see that we had some good results. I'd really like it if all of the kids could focus enough to get the answers from the presentations. Perhaps I'm expecting too much for the age groups. If we had one-on-one situations they might get all of the information we're trying to teach them. When you put more kids into the mix, they're too busy getting to know each other and goofing off to pay attention. This was a major issue for the HSA. We have definitely had some characters come to our academies! I'm hoping they had a lot of fun and want to learn more about computer science.

     --Kelley Lester

The MSA was a great success We had a good group of students that participated they benefited the changes we made in the educational materials,\\ but there is still great room for improvement. We kept the same format from the last MSA which is a single session. Luckly we were able to squezze 21 students in. Thanks Team for making this all possible!

     --Daniel V.

At middle school academies, students spend a day learning about robotics, animation, and web design. They use NXT Software to program robots, Scratch to learn animation, and Microsoft FrontPage to design webpages. Before the academy, I helped the other INSPIRED members put folders together for the students and charged the robots and the laptops. On Saturday, I worked at the Registration Table making sure all the students had a name tag and got their picture taken. I also led a team of three students throughout the academy, helping them with programming their robots and designing their web pages. After the academy, we had a meeting to designate clean up and grading tasks to members. I was assigned to grade the Scratch pre- and post-lab quizzes. Overall, the academy went extremely well. Sometimes the students were a little rowday and loud, but other than that they were cool.

     --Cynthia W.

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