It’s easy to lose track of time, now that I’m no longer counting the weeks as if I were heading to the end of another grading period. But after taking last week off, spent mostly catching up on all of the household projects that I didn’t have time to do during the school year, I decided that I would spend my mornings this week moving all of the robotics inventory to my new room from my old room and from another room where the majority of the kits and parts were abandoned at the beginning of the pandemic. 

Even though we ended this last year with some students working in the classroom, I kept the curriculum based on what could be accomplished from home, which meant not using any of the robots the school had in its inventory. That was required because the previous school year had “ended” so abruptly that whatever robotics projects were underway were abandoned as-is on March 13, so, except for the new kits that were never used, hundreds of robot projects need to be disassembled and their parts placed in inventory. Essentially, except for the new robot kits, right now I cannot tell you how many VEX kits we have in-stock that can be used for instruction next year. That’s a big reason why I’m moving all of this materials right now, because there is no way for me to plan for next year’s robotics courses with no knowledge of what kinds of robot kits or how many kits we have or can count on for students to use. 

Thus Step 1 is moving everything to the new robotics lab. I’ve been working on that for four mornings this first week and still have at least one, maybe two more mornings to get everything moved. 

Step 2 will be to disassemble all of the projects and organize/inventory all of the parts so that I can determine how many robot builds we can do simultaneously. Right now I have no idea how long the disassembly will take but I’m sure that it will take longer than a week. Figuring out the best way to store all of the parts will be a big part of the process and, like everything else “robotics,” it will be highly iterative and will go through many versions before we find a way that works best. Yay robots!

Week 1 Addendum: It turns out that I was able to complete the move on the fifth day, which happened to be on Monday of Week 2. There may be robot kits in other rooms that I am not aware of, but I have to assume that I now have the full inventory in my new room. Now I get to spend the rest of this week (Week 2) disassembling and storing the robot kits. Here we go.