UK Academic Team Blog : Robotics

remix UK – a 48 hour conversation

ukacademia — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:51:25 GMT

Hi Everyone

If you have been wondering 'where next for the web?' this event might just be for you and there is an early bird saving for the first three hundred people to book. Click here to reserve a place.

And if you have any ideas for a topic you would like to see presented at remix UK and have a good idea of just who you’d like to present it, there is a chance you can get it added to the mash up.

Best for the weekend,

Allison

Films for Learning

ukacademia — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:53:52 GMT

One of the exciting new projects being demonstrated at the BETT show this year is the Films for Learning Project. I know that many of you work with your feeder schools to establish links, provide extra curricular activities and to foster enthusiasm for Computer Science and Engineering subjects and I think this resource could help you. I see potential for you to help your feeder schools make videos that other schools can benefit from, either in your area or across the country. I see students demonstrating their programming, electronics, robotics projects to their peers. What do you think?

Claire

The details of the project are:

Films for Learning (FFL) is a project that has been inspiring schools for two years now to create their own video resources and share them with others online as part of core curriculum. FFL is organised out of Thomas Hardye School in Dorset with the first year of funding from NESTA.

· Audience for FFL is youth 6-18 years of age and teaching professionals.

· All submitted videos are moderated by UK teaching professionals before publication to ensure the site content is safe and appropriate for education use.

· Microsoft is a sponsor of FFL and helped to re-launch www.filmsforlearning.org. This collaborative site and online community will serve as an educational resource that inspires and helps teachers and students to make their own video productions.

· Approximately 50 schools in the UK take part today (note that most school/classrooms are already undertaking video projects but haven’t had a place to interact around them more broadly.

· School participation costs – a DV video camera, a PC running Windows XP or Windows Vista for access to Windows MovieMaker, Internet connectivity to publish the video to filmsforlearning.org

· The Films for Learning community members provide student and teacher activity/training days, using a travelling film lab with equipment funded by Microsoft, to help schools start media enhanced, personal learning activities.

The introductory FFL video (provided as a WMV) is available here – please watch if you wanted to see and hear more about FFL by the teachers and pupils doing FFL today! http://community.filmsforlearning.org.ultimahosts.eu/video/FfL-Film-2008.wmv

Robotics and .NET Fundamentals webcasts

ukacademia — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:41:33 GMT

Dan Waters has posted a series of introduction level webcasts on his blog. The content includes:

Introduction
Getting Started
- Setting up the Create
- Serial port communication in VC# Express
- Teaching the robot to sing
More on serial port stuff
- Setting up and utilizing Bluetooth
- Driving the robot in a square
Intro to VPL and MS Robotics Studio
- Learning how to drive the robot via a dialog box
- See how you can use VPL to create a program without writing any code whatsoever
Introducing Autonomous Behavior
- Using the iRobot Create's sensors and a flow diagram to back up when an obstacle is encountered
- Conclusion to the series

and you can access it here.

Claire

Update to Robotics course materials

ukacademia — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 13:21:00 GMT

"Robotics has long been a technology area that has captured the attention and expectations of many."

Welcome to the Microsoft Robotics Studio (1.0) by Tandy Towers, General Manager, Microsoft Robotics Group.

We know that a lot of interesting robotics work is going on in British Universities and that many of you are taking a look at Robotics Studio. To help you get started we recommend a visit to the Microsoft Robotics Studio Developer Center where you will find the following information including updated courseware.

Introduction
Welcome to Microsoft Robotics Studio (1.5)
Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime
Microsoft DSS Manifest Editor
Microsoft Visual Programming Language
Microsoft Visual Simulation Environment
Robotics Tutorials and Samples
Microsoft Robotics Studio Courseware
Support
Glossary

If you are already using Robotics Studio in your curriculum then we would like to hear from you. ukacinfo@microsoft.com

Claire