In her first year as the district’s primary and intermediate Makerspace teacher, Courtney Brame took a shot and applied for a STEM-related grant through the Tennessee Valley Authority — hoping to bring coding, robots and their practical applications to the classroom.
Now, she and her current and future students will get that chance.
During last week’s Trigg County Board of Education meeting, District Director of Curriculum and Instruction Karen Solise confirmed Brame’s classroom would be receiving a grant totaling $1,500 — for the purchase of six Ozobots educator kits, eight protective cases for the soon-to-be-built Ozobots, and 10 sets of special coding markers.
In her grant proposal, Brame noted she’s looking to continue the transformation of her classroom into a bastion of science, technology and mathematics, and to do so, robots could be the next step. Students will learn about the practical applications of robots, particularly in the industrial and production world, before turning to their own robotic creations.
Ozobots are user-friendly systems that allow students to test coding skills using an online application, while the coding markers provide an offline coding network.
Once familiar with coding patterns, Brame said the goal will be for students to create mazes for the robots to navigate — which will, in turn, teach debugging and other problem-solving concepts.
Already students have crafted wooden boats and propeller cars in Makerspace this year, so robots are the next step in natural learning progression.
Brame said this project would expose more than 700 students annually to the world of robotics, giving them first-hand experience into the 21st century.
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