Local Teachers, UC Davis Team for Math, Science Improvement Project

By Solano County Office of Education

SOLANO COUNTY, CA -- The Programming and Robotics Integrated with Science and Mathematics (PRISM) project has begun a second year of computing and robotics training for local area teachers.

And as part of the project, teachers from the Benicia, Dixon, Fairfield-Suisun, San Ramon, Travis and Vacaville school districts, as well as St. Catherine of Siena, have been working with a team from the UC Davis Center for Integrated Computing and STEM Education and industry partner Barobo, Inc. to bring computing and robotics to local students.

The PRISM project's funded as part of a grant awarded by the California Department of Education to the Solano County Office of Education in 2014.

For the last year, teachers have been using the Linkbots from Barobo and the training from the
UC Davis C-STEM Center to improve math and science performance of 5th through 12th grade
students. Throughout the year, teachers found higher student interest and success in math concepts
that were paired with robotics and computing. Teachers used robotics mazes to practice measurement
and angles as well as perimeter and area with the robots in elementary school. They used virtual
robots on RoboBlockly.ucdavis.edu, a new online tool which allows students to code a virtual robot on
any computer, to practice graphing and using the coordinate plane. In middle school, students created
their own virtual stores practicing with discounts and tax and making math real through computing. In
physics, students modeled motion on the robots and broke down motion graphs. In high school, math,
students used computing and robotics to go deeper in both geometry and algebra concepts for both
extension and review.

This past summer, the teachers went even deeper with the computing and robotics and have begun to
develop their own content for the classroom using this training. Through team challenges to solve logic
riddles, growth mindset conversations, and lots of coding and robotics practice, the teachers prepared
for another great year of bringing computing to their students. As part of the grant requirements the
teachers are also developing their own curriculum adapted to their students. What has already been
developed is very exciting and truly integrates computing and robotics in the science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) Grades 5-12 classrooms.

This year they also have access to a new tool, the Linkbot hub from Barobo, Inc., which is bringing the
computing and robotics experience to the Chromebook. This tool allows the teachers and students to
code and control a Linkbot robot from a Chromebook like they did in the computer labs. A few of our
teachers acted as beta testers for the hub before it was released, developing curriculum and providing
feedback on the hub tools. Barobo even came out to do site visits to help with setup and
troubleshooting, which creates a very strong relationship between one of our industry partners and our
teachers. The students loved the lesson days when the Barobo team came to visit. With the
introduction of this exciting new tool, Vacaville USD is training more elementary teachers to bring
coding and robotics to their students.

On November 5th, the teachers met again at the 6th Annual Conference in Integrated Computing &
STEM Education at the UC Davis Conference Center. The teachers presented on what they have done
in their classroom over the last year and collaborated with other teachers who are also using computing
and robotics from the UC Davis C-STEM Center. Five of our project teachers are receiving the C-STEM
Teacher of the Year award for their work, and another administrator receiving the C-STEM
Administrator of the Year award for supporting her teachers. Most excitedly, Cambridge Elementary
School has won the C-STEM School of the Year award for their work to bring computing and robotics to
all of their students.

Text and image courtesy SCOE