IEEE Students To Meet, Plan for SoutheastCon 2015

The Murray State University student chapter of IEEE will have a Spring 2015 Kickoff / planning meeting Wednesday, January 21st, 2015 at 3.30 p.m., 135 Blackburn.

The meeting will discuss details pertaining to the formation of a Robot Team. The Robot Team will compete at the SoutheastCon 2015 Student Hardware Competition to be held in Fort Lauderdale, FL, April 9th - April 12th, 2015.

The IEEE Robot Team needs members with the following experience or background:

1. Electrical engineering

2. Mechanical engineering

3. Computer programming

All interested Engineering Physics students plus IET majors are encouraged to attend.

Free pizza and drinks will be available.

For more information, please contact Dr. Leedy at aleedy@murraystate.edu

GitHub Student Developer Pack

GitHub recently released a suite of software, programming resources, cloud development tools, and other development resources specifically for students.

The Education branch of GitHub has partnered with several providers to offer students a nice bundle of free services, software, and opportunities to begin app and service development.

For complete information, click here.

To be eligible, you must be a student aged 13+ and enrolled in a degree or diploma granting course of study. All one needs is a school-issued email address, valid student identification card, or other official proof of enrollment.

To get access to the pack, GitHub will need to verify your student status. Sign up using the form and GitHub will send you an email once you've been verified.

GitHub Education is also a great STEM resource for crowdsourcing programming, for software development, for learning to code, for improving code, and for all sorts of activities related to software development.

Kentucky Academy of Technology Education at Murray State Brings NAO to Western Kentucky

Parts of this post are borrowed from the WKMS coverage of KATE's latest technology endeavor, the NAO programmable robot. I include portions of the interview to ensure continued coverage of innovative and STEM-related topics which promote local efforts to integrate emerging technologies in education and entrepreneurship.

Kate Lochte and WKMS sat down with Dr. Robert Lyons, Ginny Kelly, and Dwayne Buchanan to discuss the introduction of emerging technologies within Primary and Secondary Education. The newest technology promoted by KATE (Kentucky Academy of Technology Education) is the NAO robot. NAO is a French-made programmable robot developed specifically for educating young minds - and perhaps older minds, too - in the field of robotics and programming.

The NAO, designed and built by Aldebaran, is programmable using a collection of images to move the robot through a set of behaviors. NAO can also be customized by students by learning C++ and create their own set of custom behaviors.

"This is the second year the NAO robot is utilized in the Kentucky Academy of Technology Education program. A middle school in Bullitt County was the first to conduct a trial run. Students were selected to already had an interest in computer programming to try the software and the robot. They took their learning experience to a nearby elementary school for a demonstration. Because of the interest in robots, students who were not necessarily leaders in the classroom stepped forward and became leaders in the project. Feedback shows that 80% of the kids in the trial had gone on to take another programming class in STEM." (WKMS; http://wkms.org/post/how-murray-state-introducing-kids-emerging-world-robotics; August 15th, 2014)

Ginny, Robert, and Dwayne also did a great job of incorporating Make and D-I-Y activities into their discussion.

Please listen to the entire interview at WKMS here.

Kristen Garcia: IEEE Student Featured on Murray State's Website

Kristin Garcia is an Engineering Physics major, Mathematics minor, from Milan, Tennessee. One of Kristin's major accomplishments was helping to reform Murray State's IEEE student chapter in 2011. Ms. Garcia is a junior at Murray State.

Joshua Hutson Conducts STLP Workshop

On March 17th, Joshua Hutson demonstrated his PrintrBot Simple as part of the Student Technology Leadership Program (STLP) at Murray Elementary School. Joshua also led the students through a Code.org programming tutorial.

The teacher-advisor for STLP informed Joshua there is a desire for more workshops like the one he has scheduled. The advisor also expressed interest in more projects similar to Joshua's and may need more Murray State faculty, staff, or students to present their efforts to STLP.

The Printrbot Simple is an affordable, entry-level 3D printer available from Printrbot. Printrbot Simple can be ordered as a kit or pre-assembled and includes only what is needed to get started in the world of 3D printing. (Source: printrbot.com/)

Code.org is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to expanding participation in computer science technology by women and students of color, but believes every student in every school should have the opportunity to learn computer programming. (Source: Code.org/about)

Update

"We had fun until the internet went down. Kandi Dawson the STLP teacher sponsor and parent volunteers were a great help." (J. Hutson)