The Wire

What do you get when you combine veteran Mouse Squad members with breadboards, circuits, and switches?

Garage Robotics Specialists!

In the spirit of the DIY movement, MAKE Zine, and the long history of tinkerers, inventors, and at-home engineers, here comes Garage Robotics. On Thursday, January 21st, 40 of NYC's finest Squad Members assembled along with 5 star Mouse Squad Coordinators to launch a pilot semester of the Garage Robotics Badge at Manhattan's ACCESS School. Together, Squad Members and Coordinators built circuits, lit LEDs, and experimented with a digital switch.

Garage Robotics (GR) is the first in a series of "Specialist Badges," or extended certification opportunities for experienced Squad members, being written and tested for Mouse Squads. This pilot curriculum is being offered to select New York Squads seeking "next level" content to grow students' interest, enthusiasm, and skill.

GR is an extended introduction to the foundations of electrical, robotic, and computer engineering. It's the ultimate first step for the budding engineer, curious technician, motivated tinkerer or robotics and electronics enthusiast. Over the course of these sequenced semester-long activities, Squad Members will cover topics like Understanding Circuits, Voltage and Current, and Basics of the Microprocessor. All GR Badge activities are hands-on and culminate with students designing and building their own invention.

NYC Pilot groups will cover GR's 10 Specialist Activities and work to complete prototypes as their culminating Badge Activity. During the course of their work, students and Coordinators will offer critical feedback to Mouse in order to revise and improve components of the curriculum and materials with aim to complete a Network-wide Launch of this first Specialist Badge in the fall of 2010.

Special thanks to Angel Hernandez and Manhattan's ACCESS School for serving as the Garage Robotics Host Squad for GR's three Spring workshops.

Click here to check out all of the photos from the workshop.