Writing a Grant



I took most of the summer off to participate in family activities. It is important to set aside time for family and personal interests. Of course, my personal interests include what I teach so sometimes drawing the line between my personal hobbies and work is difficult.

 In my previous blog, published in May 2019, I mentioned the Jr. Botball Competition in Northern Idaho. Last week I received an email from the Idaho STEM Action Center about some additional training they are giving educators who already took the basic training. I decided that this would be a good opportunity for me to get a better understanding of the different ways to program the KIPR robot. This robot uses a form of the programming language C. The students need to type word commands and pay attention to punctuation. The thinking is the same as any drag-and-drop programming, but students experience the joys of learning a new language.

I filled out the application in about 3 hours. I took particular care to review the scoring rubric and strengthened any area that I thought could use more explanation.

Here's a question that was asked on the application and my response.

Please describe your experience with the Junior Botball Challenge (JBC) Program so far. Include details about your level of training, implementation in your learning environment, and participation in Challenge Days, as applicable.

My first introduction to the Jr. Botball Challenge Program took place during an iSTEM Conference in Lewiston, Idaho. I attended the workshop to explore the possibility of using the equipment in my STEAM classroom with students who were interested in going beyond block coding. It wasn't until last school year that I had a group of students mentally ready for this step, although the equipment was always available for them to choose from. Students participating in a coding unit during school may choose to use LEGO WeDo or Mindstorms NXT, Edison Bot, or SpheroSPK+ during the robotics section. These robots all use drag-and-drop programming and although the students have typically self-selected the LEGO Mindstorms in the past, I found that most of their class time was spent on building the robot, not programming. After building various styles of robots with the Mindstorm pieces, I informed the students that they would be programming the equipment that was already built. The group of students played around with the LEGO equipment for a while but then started using the Jr. Botball robots I received from the iSTEM conference. Once they got the hang of the syntax they didn't look back. The students started attending my CoderDojo club and my MakerSpace club to continue working on their programming. Once I saw their interest grow I asked them if they would be interested in attending the Jr. Botball competition hosted by Janice Weesner. Our district has a policy against traveling to competitions with elementary students, making the in-town competition a special event. As for my training, I attended a workshop that presented the basic commands to use the motors and servos. Because of my experience with LEGO robotics, I was able to figure out how to program the sensors, although I did need to dig around on the web to find the correct commands. I have participated in one challenge event and look forward to developing more interest from my small group who attended. This workshop will help me develop more skills to guide the students and it will also provide me with the needed equipment to engage more students.

 When I looked back at the rubric I noticed that no points were given to this question. The next question dealt with the goals of my program. To score in the top area regarding this question the response needed to show the following: "The goal for continued participation in the JBC program is clear, responsive to the learning environment, and connects with the overall program goal of building an early pathway to CS success." I asked myself the following questions:

  1. Where did I communicate a clear goal for attending the training and participating in the JBC program?
  2. Where did I communicate that this quest for training resulted from a response to the learning environment?
  3. How did I connect my need with the goal of the JBC program which is building an early pathway to CS success?
Once I broke down the criteria I analyzed my response and made sure to give explicit clues to what the scorers needed to find. For example, I said, "My goal for attending the training and participating in the JBC program is..." Hopefully, you get the picture.

There are only 16 training spots available. I gave it my best shot to get one of them. We'll see on September 9th if the scorers pick my application as a winner.


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