Jr. Robocamp
About the Teacher
Mr. Calderon is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelors degree in Psychology (Pre-Med) and a Masters degree in counseling from St. Edwards University. He has been a middle school teacher for Pflugerville I.S.D. at Westview Middle School for 7 years. He has taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math and science. He has also been a cheerleading coach and a boys soccer coach for at Westview for 4 years. The Westview Middle School Cheerleading team achieved a National Championship in 2010 and a Regional Championship in 2012. The boys soccer team also recently won the district championship for P.I.S.D. in May of 2012. Mr. Calderon is also a GED instructor for Austin Community College where he has personally achieved over 120 graduates from program. Mr. Calderon’s philosophy in teaching and coaching is to create a positive, comfortable environment where students have the ability to learn and excel. He is an avid chess player and always enjoys a quick game to keep his students engaged. During his off time, Mr. Calderon enjoys spending time with his daughters (Victoria -15 and Isabella-7) bike riding, swimming and golfing. As an ongoing project of 6 years, Mr. Calderon has volunteered time to collect blankets and clothing for Austin’s homeless as well as donations for the Boys Scouts Club #2 in his home town of Chihuahua, Mexico. He is excited to join this wonderful organization and looks forward to spending time this summer with his new students.
Some of the things the campers learned while in camp
Campers were introduced to the design and implementation of troubleshooting and building strategies in regards to building robots. Young People focused on the physics concepts such as simple machines. Campers explored levers, wheels, gears, and pulleys. Campers built several robots and or machines to achieve greater understanding of robotics. Young People worked in groups of 3 and rotated in between stations. Young People also had an “out of the box” project in which they built a robot without specs and used the lessons learned during the week to build it from scratch.
Day 1 Stations- Getting used to the system of building with legos. Campers were given given 8:00 minutes to build each simple machine at each station. Inventory and team making was done the first day.. Young People were introduced into the dynamics of a team. Different job duties were assigned as well as a team name. The job titles were materials engineer, designer, and materials specialist. Every day there was a challenge to integrate gears and build simple machines.
Day 2- Transportation- Young People worked in groups to build a vehicle for transportation. Requirements were that each vehicle must have 4 wheels and gears that allow it to be wound up.
Day 3 Airplanes- Campers followed specific specs to build an airplane. This machine was more complex and required Young People to use the same type of strategy but applied to a significantly more challenging machine. Campers needed to include at least wheels and 2 sets of propellers.
Day 4 Construction– Students worked to build a construction style truck or crane. Campers needed to incorporate pulleys that function to carry payload. Campers needed to include levers to move other legos.
Day 5- Build your own machine- Students had a gallery of machine making. They worked in groups to build their favorite transportation. It included gears, levels, and pulleys that were fully functional.
