Short week, this week I was planning on only spending Monday & Tuesday working on the VEX robots and organizing the piles of parts. I literally spent the whole time just taking apart the abandoned bots and projects. There were maybe six VEX V5 competition bots that were rather complicated and difficult to disassemble and the remainder were VEX Cortex testbed projects that were probably being put together by 8th grade science classes before the great dismissal of March 13th of 2020. At the end of two days the bots and testbeds were disassembled, but things are not even close to being organized. 

I organized the LEGO EV3 parts using the parts bins that I brought over from the Science classroom. But I still need to see how much NXT parts and Technics parts I have to use and get a better idea of how much VEX Cortex parts I have to work with. The way to figure out the “robotics instruction capacity” is to find out how many robot “brains” or programmable control units I have in inventory of every type of robot. How many LEGO EV3 or LEGO NXT “bricks” I have or how many VEX IQ “Brains” or VEX Cortex hubs I have will determine how many robot builds students will be able to simultaneously do. I’m certain I’ll need at least one more parts bin stand (probably two more…).

But, I decided that because this was my birthday week (Thursday) that I’d begin my time-off on Wednesday and decide next week when I’d return to the pile of parts. Then I found out that licensed staff won’t be on campus until the 21st. So I might not have access until then. So… still a lot to do, but I’m going to have to be very smart with my limited time and possibly do my “planning” and creating my curriculum for next year based on what I know right now and then work out the physical stuff when I’m back on-campus around the 21st…

Happy 4th of July weekend y’all.