Message from Joel Trudeau
It has been a pleasure to work as a mentor, collaborating with the talented and creative engineers!, designers!, programmers!, entrepreneurs!, roboticists! of Dawson Robotics. They have risen to every challenge of CRC Arcanum all while managing scheduling and space constraints, unforeseen delays, and the difficulties of navigating college life in general. I marvel at the passion for creative problem solving, and the team-spirited dedication to the endeavour, which I have learned is no less important to them than their academics. Our enterprise at the CRC strongly encourages self-directed learning and self-leadership development, and naturally permits students the valuable opportunity to explore, discover, make mistakes and learn collaboratively. As a STEM/STEAM educator interested in developing context-rich projects that can be done in makerspaces and other learning environments, I am excited to explore other dimensions and integrations of the CRC experience here at Dawson with a Robotics-For-All approach. Thanks to the CRC for your contributions to education and for providing the incredible opportunity students have to exercise their creative muscle every year. Also, a special thanks to Dawson College’s Facilities and Management, the Student Success Action Plan initiative, and programs who have supported the project. As the founder of SPACE (Sciences Participating with Arts and Culture in Education), with an eye towards supporting future Dawson Robotics cohorts, I look forward to challenges posed by the CRC in the years to come. Finally, a word for the team: congratulations on being awesome, for persevering, and for taking responsibility for your learning. I can’t wait to see how everything comes together. Onward!
Do we have a wide variety of pieces…Not really. Do we have an array of power tools at our disposal…Maybe not. Do we have a very spacious workshop…Most certainly not. But what we lack in materials we make up for it up through our amazing songs, our ideas, and above all, our cardboard and duck tape. Being on robot team means being able to find solutions to a variety of problems. Conceptualizing, making prototypes, testing things out, and taking things apart are all part of a day's work. Sharing ideas with each other and listening to everyone’s suggestions and ideas is also something extremely important, it has led to our robot's development and has also enabled everyone to get to know each other and grow bonds together. All in all, being on robot team has been a fun and wild experience that will continue to be enjoyable for all of us.
Despite many COVID setbacks, the kiosk build and design has been a major challenge due to Dawson’s current space and storage deficiency. However, Dawson’s robotics team’s will and determination as well as generous support from faculty and administration have propelled us to make a kiosk right out of a video game. The video game Portal has been a fan favorite puzzle game of all ages, challenging our problem solving skills to move on to other levels in the game as well as amusing us with a sassy evil robot GLaDOS set on tricking and defeating the player. A game for all ages and genders, Portal presents a perfect example of what the CRC represents; a competition challenging all those solving problems, overcoming obstacles and achieving an experience of accomplishment after having completed something intellectually and creatively fulfilling.
The objective of the programming team was to acccommodate whatever the robot crew built and to optimize the tasks that the robot needed to perform. Learning how to use the Crcduino was a fun challenge to overcome and the versatility of it was popular amongst our ranks.
The website (along with the video) are the only components that could show ultimately that we had indeed been here, together and devoted. By virtue of being completely virtual, working on the website is less challenging than the other components. With that said, the journey that has culminated to this point remains one which would be hard to forget.
Thank you for being here!
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