To compete in the world economy, all agree, Rhode Island’s young people need to master math, science and technology.
How’s this for a way to learn what they need? Starting next year, state officials say, students at all 67 of Rhode Island’s public, charter and career and technical high schools will have a chance to participate in the FIRST Vex Challenge, a robot-building competition.
The announcement last week makes the Ocean State the first to involve all its public high schools in the challenge, which involves building a robot able to complete a specific set of tasks.
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FIRST supplies the “robotics kits” with all the equipment and instructions; the schools provide a teacher/mentor. The teams then compete in a statewide event, and the winners can go on to the regional or even national competition.
“This program will provide Rhode Island’s young people with an extraordinary opportunity to get hands-on, real-world science and engineering experience in a way that brings true excitement to learning,” Gov. Donald L. Carcieri said in announcing the endeavor.
The FIRST Vex Challenge, he said, will be “an important part of our plan for educating Rhode Island’s next generation of science, technology and engineering leaders.”
The news came on the second day of the Business Innovation Factory’s second annual Collaborative Innovation Summit, held at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence. FIRST founder Dean Kamen, president of DEKA Research and Development Corp., spoke at the event.
“This is something tangible in education we can do to deliver value to the students,” he said. Rhode Island will be an example, he added, and he hopes it will inspire other states to do the same, so one day there can be statewide competitions leading to the national Vex Challenge.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded in 1989 by Kamen, the inventor of the Segway Human Transporter. Its programs have brought together an alliance of business leaders, educators, mentors, volunteers and technology organizations to motivate young people about science and engineering.
FIRST’s board of directors includes business and technology leaders from companies including Boston Scientific Corp., Xerox, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson and Bausch and Lomb.
“Kids see role models in Britney Spears,” Kamen said. “They don’t understand the difference between a celebrity and a hero.” Noting that “there are half a million jobs out there in engineering and the sciences,” he said FIRST’s goal is get students excited about technology.
In Rhode Island, the FIRST Vex Challenge is being launched by the Business Innovation Factory, with the support of the governor, education leaders and the R.I. Economic Development Corporation, among others.
“This opportunity proves that Rhode Island is uniquely positioned to use its size as a competitive advantage to innovate in education,” said Saul Kaplan, founder of the Business Innovation Factory and executive director of the RIEDC.
The program is expected to cost $140,000 per year, including the budget for a statewide competition beginning in 2007. The coalition will seek support from business and community sponsors and mentorship from the local colleges and universities, officials said.“We cannot afford to fail in preparing our students for the jobs of tomorrow – jobs that will require skills in math, science and engineering,” Carcieri said.
A key part of the program will be the integration of the Vex Challenge into the state’s new standards for science, technology, mathematics and engineering education, officials said. Because the competition emphasizes inquiry learning and teaching, it is “consistent with the focus” of state and national initiatives on that front, they said.
The Vex Challenge requires no special tools and can be implemented by teachers as part of a school’s science and math curriculum, or can be run as an after school activity, officials said.
Throughout the challenge, students must maintain an engineering notebook to track their progress, successes and challenges. During the build period, teams work as a group to brainstorm solutions, design a robot to do various tasks, and build and test their designs.
The projects culminate in competitions designed to be fun, high-energy, sports-like events with judges and awards. FIRST issues a new robot “challenge” every year, enabling schools to continue the program for multiple years and reach more students.
The Business Innovation Factory will collaborate with FIRST to conduct a detailed evaluation of the project’s implementation, officials said, and FIRST will use its experience here as a model for the program’s national expansion.
