Jennifer L. Cross

A visual robot-programming environment for multidisciplinary education

Arts & Bots is an educational program that aims to broaden diversity and participation in technology by integrating arts and crafts with robotics. Arts & Bots is a flexible program that can be integrated into in-school and out-of-school programs in many subject areas. This paper describes the visual programming environment developed for Arts & Bots and its goals of low barriers to entry, classroom compatibility, supporting student acquisition of computational thinking skills, and enabling complex robot behaviors. The authors also compare and contrast the programming environment with other popular visual programming environments, namely Scratch, Alice and LEGO NXT-G.

Community-Empowered Air Quality Monitoring System

Developing information technology to democratize scientific knowledge and support citizen empowerment is a challenging task. In our case, a local community suffered from air pollution caused by industrial activity. The residents lacked the technological fluency to gather and curate diverse scientific data to advocate for regulatory change. We collaborated with the community in developing an air quality monitoring system which integrated heterogeneous data over a large spatial and temporal scale. The system afforded strong scientific evidence by using animated smoke images, air quality data, crowdsourced smell reports, and wind data. In our evaluation, we report patterns of sharing smoke images among stakeholders. Our survey study shows that the scientific knowledge provided by the system encourages agonistic discussions with regulators, empowers the community to support policy making, and rebalances the power relationship between stakeholders.

Utilizing engineering to teach non-technical disciplines: Case studies of robotics within middle school English and health classes

When engineering and computing activities are solely electives, extra curriculars, or informal learning activities, student participation is limited by self-selection. By integrating technological projects into required coursework, all students gain exposure. The Arts & Bots Math and Science Partnership integrates creative robotics into middle school classes such as English and history as transdisciplinary, creative robotics projects. We discuss two case studies of such projects, describing how teachers developed projects through sequential implementations; and how project instruction focuses on developing student technological fluency, collaboration, and understanding of class content. One case study describes the integration of Arts & Bots into 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts in which students build robotic sculptures that represent a poem or scene in a play. The second case study describes a 7th grade Health and Physical Education project in which students build models of human joints and limbs in order to understand muscle pairs. We discuss differences, themes, and best practices for integration of creative robotics into non-technical classes through a comparison of projects implemented to date. The case studies are supplemented by data from student (N=195) and teacher (N=6) evaluations.

Training teachers to integrate engineering into non-technical middle school curriculum

The Arts & Bots Math and Science Partnership program integrates creative technological fluency projects as transdisciplinary activities into non-technical courses, creating a pathway for students of all abilities and areas of interests to engage with engineering and computing. The Professional Development provided by the program prepares teachers from traditional disciplines, such as English, History or Science, to integrate robotics projects into disciplinary classrooms, and aims to promote teacher skill, confidence, and self-efficacy in the design and classroom implementation of robotics design projects. The Arts & Bots project has developed and piloted a new program for in-service secondary school teachers. To date, we have trained 38 teachers from a variety of disciplines to implement Arts & Bots robotics design projects in their classrooms. Teacher training integrates experience with robotics kit components, a programming interface, the engineering design process, and recognition of student affinities towards engineering and computer science. We present the development model for our teacher training program as well as preliminary positive results regarding teacher practice and self-efficacy. Data includes teacher surveys, interviews, and class observations. Teacher training has developed over the course of several years, and we discuss how teacher experiences have shaped the development of the program to its current form.

Visualization Tool for Environmental Sensing and Public Health Data

To assist residents affected by oil and gas development, public health professionals in a non-profit organization have collected community data, including symptoms, air quality, and personal stories. However, the organization was unable to aggregate and visualize these data computationally. We present the Environmental Health Channel, an interactive web-based tool for visualizing environmental sensing and public health data. This tool enables discussing and disseminating scientific evidence to reveal local environmental and health impacts of industrial activities.

ChargeCar community conversions: Practical, electric commuter vehicles now!

The technology for practical, short-range electric commuter vehicles (EVs) is here now! The ChargeCar project at Carnegie Mellon University aims to exploit todays technology to make efficient, clean, quiet, commuter electric vehicles available to the public, while providing a basis for local economic development and increasing public awareness of EVs. We have developed a “kit” of modular components that can be used to convert a conventional gasoline-powered car to 100% electric power in a matter of a few days, utilizing commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components, along with existing manufacturing facilities and automotive garages. This kit has been installed and tested in two Honda Civics, and has performed well in over 3500 miles of driving. The prototype vehicles have a range of 40+ miles, top speed in excess of 70 mph, and charge overnight on any 120 VAC receptacle. Present efforts are toward commercializing the manufacturing and conversion process, while continuing related research in compound energy sytems - e.g. battery plus ultracapacitor - and pursuing educational efforts with the public and local schools.