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April 10, 2006 Vol. 77, no.
12S
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| LEARNING TOY: ME
senior Nathan Ng and San Francisco middle school students pose
with their robotic vehicle creation made of LEGOS. ME engineers
help the kids build and program toy robot cars as part of Pi
Tau Sigma’s outreach program to homeless children. (Photo provided
by PTS)
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“They’ll
do amazing things”
ME students teach robot fundamentals to children of SF’s homeless
The world of a Berkeley Engineering student is vastly different from
that of a homeless 12-year-old from San Francisco. But Cal’s
Pi Tau Sigma (PTS) has brought these worlds together.
For eight weeks now, officers from the ME honor society have volunteered
their Friday afternoons to help homeless kids in San Francisco build
and program toy robot cars. “Our goal is to distract the kids
from their problems for a while and, in the process, maybe inspire
an interest in science and engineering,” says the program’s
coordinator, ME and business administration junior, Jae Kim.
It all started last year when Kim volunteered at Berkeley High School
and was inspired by the interaction. At the same time, PTS officers
were floating the idea of using LEGO robot kits to teach underprivileged
kids how to build and run motors, sensors and software. Kim, the club’s
liaison to National Instruments, approached his contact there, who
urged him to apply for a company grant. The contact also suggested
working with “A Home Away from Homelessness,” an after-school
program for San Francisco’s homeless children. When National
Instruments awarded PTS $2,000 in the fall, the pieces fell into place.
Kim used some of the money to buy two LEGO kits, which retail for
$200 each, and borrowed more kits from fellow engineers who had them
as
children. Kim himself did not grow up with LEGOs. “My family
wasn’t super well-off,” he says. “A lot of us Berkeley
students are blessed to be here, and we got here because we had someone’s
help. Now it’s our turn —and duty — to give back.”
On the first day of class, Kim came ready with lesson plans. But he
quickly realized the kids needed one-on-one help. Each was starting
from a different point, so Kim threw out the master plan. Individuals
proceeded at their own pace and, with the engineers’ help, slowly
built their cars and taught the robotic vehicles to perform tasks.
Occasionally, there were lightbulb moments, such as when one child
determined that if he switched his car’s small wheels to big
wheels, the car would cover more ground.
Overall, Kim counts the pilot a success and says he wants to do it
again next semester. Eventually, he hopes to make it permanent and
include more kids. The seven middle schoolers, for their part, have
faith that PTS’s homegrown program will be fun, exciting and
dependable, things often missing in their lives. At the same time,
they’re teaching the Berkeley engineers that learning isn’t
necessarily an orderly, linear process from alpha to omega but that
under the right circumstances, kids can flourish in math and science. “Give
these kids the attention and show them you care, and they’ll
do amazing things,” says Kim.
Like Kendra, who went from indifference about her car to programming
it to collide with something, pause, reverse, pause, and turn. Or Augustine,
who programmed his car to chime out a rendition of “Happy Birthday” — entirely
by himself.
For more information, go to www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~pts/.
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