Hey all,
I’m now a mentor for the robotics club I just graduated from, I wanted to make a video curriculum that our club could hold onto and use to supplement club members’ learning in a more tangible way for those who aren’t in the robotics class at our school (which is most). I put together a list of the topics that I thought would be good to teach in different sections (Programming, CAD, General Concepts, Design, Building). I was also planning on making a few additional problems for each lesson with guided videos if they get stuck, and set up an LMS like gradescope to grade them automatically.
I have three questions here. First of all, are there any topics that you guys think are important and applicable for VEX students to learn that I could make a video on? Secondly, I’m planning to make all this stuff public. Is something like this anything you guys would be interested in? Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I just spent a few hours putting together a script of sorts for a physics lesson video, but I’m wondering if I’m wasting my time here.
I would describe myself as someone who is more passionate about learning than most, and I think robotics is a great way to introduce physics to some of these kids. However, I don’t know if high schoolers would be interested in spending time learning optional stuff. As well, I feel like most of this stuff is used pretty sparingly (if at all) in VEX. The video I’ve put together just covers four points: what is physics, position and its derivatives, vectors, and 2D kinematics. To be fair, much of this lesson is building blocks to start talking about force (I was going to get to force, torque, energy, and momentum in two later videos). Do you think it’s worthwhile to make these materials? Do you think the kids will actually benefit from it? Do you think any kids might actually take the time to watch the videos (they’re between 5-10 minutes)? I definitely think physics has been useful to me in VEX on occasion, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to warrant putting in hours to produce these optional materials for students.
Thanks all!