How to organize a circle of robotics

UPD: Published a new version of the manual.

As promised, we share our experience in organizing classes. Here we describe the general principles: where to organize them, what is needed for this, how to recruit children, how to manage them better. Also we will make a small review of the available hardware for robotics.
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Search for premises

The easiest and most comfortable option is to go to some private circle. They will do everything for you, you will only have to teach. Salary - about 400 p. per hour (in Yekaterinburg). Usually they lack good teachers, so even if you come from the street, there is a great chance that you will be welcome.

The second option - in any secondary school. Now they are all necessarily equipped with computer classes. There are various options for how to arrange classes. For example, now there is the discipline “Technology”, it is possible to conduct classes within it, it can be arranged as a special course or a circle - which form should you choose to decide privately. Salaries in schools - about 200 p. (again, in Ekb.). The main trouble is the following: in order to get settled, you need to follow inquiries, and in the process of learning you can draw all sorts of curricula and reports in the process, here you will be very helpful with the help of school management and other teachers. In general, the loyalty of the leadership is very important, they must be completely trusted and promoted.

The third option is various institutions of additional education (palaces of pioneers, palaces of children's creativity, stations of young technicians, etc.). In general, it is the same as in schools, but for some reason their salaries are several times smaller, and computer classes are far from everywhere, but there are fewer problems with bureaucracy.

Another option is to organize something in your own office, mainly for the children of employees.

Found a place that further

Next you need to explore the base of potential students, to do this, find out how many students in the upper classes of the surrounding schools, what is their level. For example, in rural schools the situation is quite typical when the level of pupils is very low, and all of them after the 9th grade go to vocational schools, therefore there are no 10-11 grades at all, and the ninth grade level hardly falls short of the 6th grade of good schools ; in such conditions it will be very difficult for you to organize something.

Then, if there are enough students, you need to call them in a circle. Sometimes it is enough to hang ads for school. We also practice test lessons: we bring the necessary pieces of hardware to computer lessons, and we give them some play. Thus, there is a higher-quality selection and by interests and abilities.

How to learn

Motivation. It is most important. Children should only look at the monitor and disturb you only when problems arise. In this case, you do not need any pedagogical abilities, you just need to be able to explain; you will not even need to convince them of the need to learn some fundamental things, as soon as they are needed to achieve the goal, the children themselves will beg to tell about them. So the classes you are no less interesting than children.

At the initial stage, the main motive of schoolchildren is a natural interest in technology - the magic of transforming the lines on the screen into mechanical movement. This is the main feature of educational robotics - this is the only technical area that is really interesting for children. At the very first lesson, at the very beginning, you need to show them something interesting so that they can catch fire.
Over time, the primary interest fades away, the main method of maintaining it is participation in competitions. If children get excited, then they already forget about everything.

A less common option is to do something of practical use, for example, elements of a smart home, and introduce it.

At first, children must have a manual on which they could do everything on their own. This is due to the fact that the speed of development is different for everyone, everyone will be at different stages, and it will be difficult to work with everyone individually. When they master the basic things, creativity will begin. Then it will be possible sometimes to give general lectures and conduct individual projects. Aerobatics - teach them to use Google, and find out everything yourself.

Usually, children study in pairs, in one class - up to 14 people.

What exactly to teach

Hard way: learn what you are fond of. For example, our comrade was making himself a smart signaling at the dacha, and then, together with the students, he made the same signaling at their school (later we will prepare a post with a story). To do this, you yourself have to write a manual. No special skills are needed for this, if you know how to write good technical documentation, then you can write a manual without any problems, in fact they are one and the same. If you chose this path, good materials on adafruit.com will probably help you .

The option is simpler - buy special children's constructors. Before choosing, go through the surrounding circles, look at what they do there, so that you can then compete with them (see the section on motivation).

Overview of glands

At first, we were going to make a complete description of everything that exists, but the task turned out to be too voluminous, so for a start we will give a general overview of what we encountered.

The topic of hardware on the level of holivarity can compete with the theme of various operating systems, I'm afraid it will not be possible to avoid this anyway, but we will try.

Lego

Very expensive (minimum set - 17K), the most common (almost monopolist), with the most developed infrastructure (a bunch of courses, large-scale competitions), the easiest to learn.

The main disadvantage is closeness and isolation from reality. The constructor uses proprietary connections that are not used anywhere else (the patents, however, have recently expired, but this has not yet affected its practical use), its own programming language and development environment (although other languages ​​are supported in principle, no one actually uses them) , even the connection between electronic components is based on its own protocols.

In general, ideologically, Lego is very similar to Microsoft, some Microsoft do not like.

Light-like constructors on analogs of Arduino

Fischertechnik, Huna, perhaps there are still some that we don’t know about. The price is lower, the quality is also slightly lower, the infrastructure is much less developed. But the electronics are all standard, you can buy something separately, more room for creativity.

Separately, we mention Multiplo - open source constructor. Unfortunately, Russia still hasn't been bothered by its production or supply, only to order via the Internet.

Arduino-based mobile platforms

Ready-made cars with sensors that almost do not need to be assembled, for example. Depending on the configuration, they can drive along certain predetermined paths, push each other, or do something else. The cost of one piece - from three and a half thousand. Work with them consists solely of programming.

Raspberri Pi and Analogs

On board, Raspberry has almost desktop Linux, thanks to this, all popular programming languages ​​are supported (mainstream is python), you can start parallel processes, run them on the crown, connect different devices via USB, launch different software, for example, to process an image, there is a web server, in short, a complete set of Itshnika joy out of the box. Among the shortcomings - a large power consumption (up to 5 watts), a higher price than the Arduino.

We made our course on Raspberry, but now we are looking more towards open source analogs, for example, BeagleBone - more powerful, less unnecessary things, such as different audio and video outputs.

We don’t know the designers who would use Raspberry as their brain in the database, we have to invent something ourselves.

There are still various very expensive designers (much more expensive than Lego), but we did not consider them.

In general, in our opinion, the most promising is Multiplo with some open source analogue of Raspberry or Arduino on board. We are trying to develop exactly this direction, we are looking for allies.

We will be glad if those present share their experience at the expense of the glands, maybe someone has it even richer than ours. And at the expense of the rest, too.