Norman, have an open mind!

Wow, what an interesting close the summer. Last Wednesday, Linda Rawlings gave me a call about my teaching assignment for the upcoming year. The offer was for me to take over the Robotics classes. I knew that I was being considered earlier but thought it had all been worked out. What a big surprise. Now I have two new classes to teach as well as develop the curriculum for both classes. The other class is an Intermediate Science class. I will be working with students on preparing for the TAKS tests in the Intermediate Science class.
But back to the Robotics. Where do I start? What do I need? Who do I call? I began my research on the internet almost immediately. We have Lego Mindstorm NTX kits and BoeBots kits for the class. I began looking at the First Robotics site for information concerning the contests. It is a bit overwhelming but I am very excited.
Tim Jordan will be assisting me with the robotics team. He is an engineer who was recently hired to teach Physics at Westlake High School. We will have 35 students in the Robotics class for the inaugural year.

Today, Tim and I met with Ray Almgren from National Instruments for lunch. We visited about all aspects of the Robotics curriculum, contests, needs and plans for the future. He attended the FRC National Competition this past spring. He said it was so exciting. In our discussion, he gave us the names of two team leaders here in Austin, John Sperry from Anderson High School and Tony Bertucci from LASA, LBJ High School. I look forward to visiting with these two team leader/teachers.

Dr. Wellman and Linda Rawlings have discussed trips for me to take to find out more information about the contests as well as the curriculum. We are making plans to visit Poway and Mt. Carmel in the San Diego area. I visited both of these schools this past year on our site visit to California. Little did I know at the time that I would be actually teaching the course.

You must always be careful what you ask for. The past few years, I have been saying that I wanted to teach something new. Well I got my wish and then some.

Come on along for the ride.