Giving Compass' Take:

• In this EdSurge post, a Missouri-based robotics teacher details recent school projects that attempt to take the tools from her class out into the real world.

• How can we support more programs such as this, which encourages both STEM learning and hands-on experience? In what ways would that help train students for the future of work?

• Here's more about the lasting benefits of robotics competitions.

A few years ago, toward the beginning of my journey into robotics, I mentored a team for a local competition. We were on our way to building a Tetrix Prime robot from a kit, when the unimaginable happened — our team’s laptops went missing — and with them, all of our code and design work. While we were no longer able to compete in the local competition, this blow to our team was but a temporary setback.

Shortly after a student on the team came to me asked, “Can we build some real robots? Ones that aren’t toys?” We were building real robots, but I realized they were looking for something a little more practical and relevant to their experience at school, so I asked what they needed help with. That’s when one of the girls piped up. “Can we build a robot that can go outside in the rain and take care of our chickens?” she asked. “I don’t like getting wet!”

At the time I was teaching science at a St. Louis-area school with its own working farm. My 4th-12th grade students didn't learn in an actual classroom, but rather in an undefined work space, which included the schoolyard farm and a nascent makerspace with a handful of robots. My current school, The Fulton School in St. Albans, Mo., also has a farm and students care for goats, beehives, chickens, garden beds, compost piles and hydroponic systems. Chores have been an important part of the school day at both of these schools, and a robot that could help with them would be much more relevant to my students' lives than one that could do a choreographed dance or shoot a basketball. So we decided to give it a try.

Read the full article about building robots with purpose by Carrie Wilson Herndon at EdSurge.