On a Saturday morning in late January, middle and high school science and technology teachers from 13 schools across Massachusetts and Rhode Island arrived at MITRE's Bedford campus as curious students in a MATE ROV building workshop. By Sunday afternoon, they deployed their working prototypes in MITRE's recently opened BlueTech Lab.
The following weekend, instructors from MATE worked with 14 schools from across Tennessee and Georgia in a workshop at the Tennessee Aquarium, sponsored by Tennessee Valley Robotics. Yet another teacher workshop was underway in Houston with 9 participants from across Texas, sponsored by the Honda USA Foundation. All workshop participants learned how to solder, build simple circuits from scratch, and create an ROV.
Smiles and high-fives were aplenty as each of the educators reported successful outcomes. The hope is for teachers to harness that same enthusiasm and bring it back to their respective schools. "Teachers are the force multipliers," says Jody Patterson of MATE. "We want them to learn this process because it serves as a practical application to so much they're already teaching in the classroom."