For this month’s big RoboSlam event–provided to students from more than three Dublin schools as part of Engineer’s Week–our volunteer staff team did something a little different. We recruited some of the most energetic electrical and electronics engineering students form DIT and then, on Friday and Monday, we gave them training on how to lead a RoboSlam workshop.
When Tuesday morning came along, our engineering students were in top form. They led the robot-building and coding workshop for 37 secondary school students, and they did it with amazingly little help from their engineering teachers.
The heroes of the day: DIT’s RoboSlam student facilitators with robotics gurus Ted Burke and Damon Berry (the two in the RoboSlam t-shirts)
Things went so well, in fact, that the secondary school students were far ahead of schedule when they broke for lunch. So the student facilitators stayed behind and worked with Ted to hatch a plan for new coding challenges that the school students could do when they returned. The students constructed much of the plan, with Ted providing advice based on our experience in prior workshops.
It was heartwarming to see the secondary students do so well, and to hear so such one-to-one tutoring and mentoring going on. I definately think it will make a difference to those school kids who got to learn from such an impressive, diverse, knowledgable, and generous group of engineering students.
This event was funded through donations from Engineers Ireland, DIT’s School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, and DIT’s Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre.
Here were the winners of our awards:
The volunteer staff who run RoboSlam couldn’t be prouder of the incredible work done by the student facilitators and the secondary school participants at yesterday’s event. Great work, everyone!
Here are pictures of the event itself:
RoboSlam 
Reblogged this on Ireland by Chance and commented:
Our students did an amazing job leading this robotics workshop for teens!
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