Luodong high school wins MOE teaching award
2014-10-15
Guo-Hua Junior High School in Luodong Township, Yilan County, was recently awarded the Ministry of Education’s Golden Award of Excellent Teaching for its innovative robot-making program.
Designed to familiarize seventh- and eighth-graders with information technology, mathematics and visual arts, the course also brings students up to date on programming, 3-D design, assembly and remote control operating techniques.
Guo-Hua Principal Chen Guo-chang said robot-related studies are no longer the exclusive domain of society’s elite. “The program inspires all students to develop their own specialized interests within the framework of interdisciplinary learning.”
Echoing Chen’s remarks, IT teacher Chang Jiun-jie said the course unlocks the creativity of the students and teaches the fundamentals of positive interaction. “Making robots is fun, pollution-free and fosters team building and good relations between classmates.”
Part of the program involves helping participants recognize the value of discarded items. Cartons, CDs and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles are finding new lives as components in robotic creations.
But for the students, the real appeal of the course is the freedom it allows to let their imaginations run wild.
Eighth-grader Lee Yun-shiuan said she has two dogs at home and wants to create a “super cool” canine equipped with a bazooka and sporting a flying jacket. Lin Chi-shyuan, another eighth-grader, said she is a lover of cats and aims to construct a feline capable of expressing its emotions through a blinking LED eye.
Visual arts teacher Lin Miao-yu welcomes such ideas and urges the students to dream big.
“My role is to spur the students on and show them how to incorporate the principles of color and pattern into their robots,” she said. “This is also a challenge for me as I have to think of new ways to reinterpret my teachings with a view to robot-making applications.”
Source: Taiwan Today (http://taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=222820&CtNode=413)
