Visible to the public Cyber Makerspace - Oct 2021Conflict Detection Enabled

Submitted by Katie Dey on Mon, 10/11/2021 - 9:26am

PI: Ákos Lédeczi

HARD PROBLEM(S) ADDRESSED

While educational robotics and makerspaces are useful to modern STEM education, they introduce both physical and economic barriers to entry. By creating a “cyber makerspace,” a simulated, networked environment, we can facilitate instruction on cyber-physical systems and their security and related topics while reducing cost and complexity. The approach will facilitate reaching audiences from traditionally underrepresented groups. It also supports remote learning, an especially important feature due to the current pandemic.

PUBLICATIONS

  • D B. Broll, D. Jean, “Making CS More Engaging in an Interconnected World,” CSTA Workshop/Professional Development for K12 Teachers, 2021

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

In this quarter, we focused on analyzing the lessons learned in the teacher PD and summer camps. We continued working on refining our tools and curriculum based on this feedback. We have prepared the final, camera-ready version of three papers that will be presented at two prestigious conferences: Frontiers of Education and IEEE Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing. We also prepared video presentations as these will be virtual/hybrid events. Finally, we started the development of a Python-based environment that enables students to write Python programs that access the services and features provided by the NetsBlox server. Students will be able to move from the block-based user interface of NetsBlox to this new environment with a gentle learning curve: the aim to preserve many of the block-based features that they are used to: sprites, the stage, events, the concurrency model, etc., but they can implement their scripts in Python. Hence, they will be able to use the physical and virtual robots with all the cybersecurity features as well as PhoneIoT from Python.

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENTS

We organized a teacher PD workshop at the annual CSTA conference to about 30 CS teachers.

EDUCATIONAL ADVANCES

As the main focus of the project is education, all of our accomplishments listed in this report contribute to educational advances.

Groups: