Mentoring Young Minds

For National Instruments employees, science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are not just job skills. These are life skills that impact the future of society. For this reason, NI employees share a passion for inspiring children of all ages to pursue science and engineering through fun, hands-on, project-based learning.

Robotics Competitions
Through its collaboration with FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) and the LEGO^® Group, NI provides employees opportunities to volunteer in after-school robotics programs and competitions that engage students with fun, technology-centric activities. Hundreds of NI employees serve as team mentors, spending an average of five to 15 hours per week serving as technical consultants and helping students cultivate business skills such as presenting and fund raising. Many other employees volunteer as judges for the competitions.

In 2010, employees from NI headquarters, NI Belgium/Netherlands, NI China, NI Germany, NI Hungary, NI Malaysia, NI Mexico, and NI Singapore volunteered in FIRST after-school robotics programs and competitions. Below are the different, age-specific FIRST programs in which NI employees participate:

• Elementary School – The Junior FIRST LEGO League (Jr. FLL) is the first in a continuum of age-specific extracurricular programs designed to inspire children's interest in STEM concepts. NI employees volunteer with Jr. FLL to provide 6- to 9-year-old students with basic robotics-oriented instruction.
• Middle School – NI employees volunteer with the FIRST LEGO League (FLL) after-school mentor program to work with 8- to 14-year-old students. By teaching students basic programming skills and helping troubleshoot their robotic creations, NI employee mentors encourage children to interact with technology.
• Junior Varsity – The FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) is a robotics contest geared toward 14- to 18-year-old junior-varsity students who are interested in designing, building, and programming robots for competition. NI volunteers teach students how to combine LEGO robotics with more technically advanced robotics systems for competition.
• Varsity – Through the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC), which FIRST calls "varsity sports for the mind," teams of 14- to 18-year-old students and their mentors spend six weeks building robots from an unassembled kit of parts; programming those robots using NI LabVIEW software or other tools; and entering them in regional, statewide, and national competitions. NI volunteers serve as FRC mentors, competition judges, referees, and other event coordinators. NI also provides technology, such as LabVIEW and NI hardware devices, that FRC teams use to control their robots.

NI employees also provide their technical expertise to robotics competitions not associated with FIRST. Two examples are NI Germany’s support of RoboCup, an international competition that promotes robotics and artificial intelligence research, and NI Switzerland’s participation in EuroBot 2010, a three-day student competition that honors Europe’s best robotics builders and programmers.

Other Hands-On Learning With Robotics
In addition to competitions, NI employees work with students and teachers to introduce them to the benefits of hands-on learning through robotics. Several NI headquarters employees volunteer at local schools to support robotics clubs, helping them build robots and learn essential technology skills that will help in their pursuit of STEM education. In other parts of the world, NI branches are hosting special events that give students an opportunity to interact with robotics. Examples include the following:

• NI Germany – hosted twenty-five 13- to 15-year-old girls at its Munich office to teach them how to program LEGO MINDSTORMS^® NXT robots
• NI Hungary – facilitated one-day LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT summit for teachers and mentors to share experiences, best practices, and lessons learned
• NI India – held an embedded system design contest in which 13 teams of college students from across India showcased systems they designed and built for mobile, networked, or stand-alone applications
• NI Mexico – delivered robotics workshops and participated in technology conferences that served more than 470 students in 2010
• NI United Kingdom and Ireland – taught LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT programming at several local schools and events such as Engineer Your Future, an event that introduces 14- to 17-year-olds to technology

Robotics Mentoring Around the World

CASE STUDY

Robotics Training in Cambodia

National Instruments is passionate about inspiring children to get excited about science and engineering. To achieve this, NI donates LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotics kits to classrooms around the world, and NI employees volunteer thousands of hours mentoring students on robotics technology.

In 2010, NI expanded its mentoring efforts to deploy its first LEGO Education WeDo™ training in an underdeveloped country. The company donated 10 LEGO Education WeDo kits to Protect the Earth Protect Yourself (PEPY), a non-governmental agency (NGO) in Cambodia that aids rural communities in improving their standards of living, with a focus on increased access to quality education.

Nicole Richard, an NI software group manager, traveled to the village of Chanleas Dai, Siem Reap, in Cambodia to deliver the kits to a school run by PEPY. She spent two days training the teachers on how to use LEGO Education WeDo in the classroom, teach engineering concepts, and develop solutions to engineering problems. She then spent a third day introducing the LEGO Education WeDo kits to the students. Although the students had never seen LEGOs before, they quickly discovered how to build models, think critically about systems, and persevere through problems.

“It was amazing to see these kids go from never having seen LEGOs to building and programming their own designs in a matter of a few hours,” Richard said. “They were able to expand on simple concepts and build creations of their own with no guided instructions.”

PEPY hopes that through these engineering training initiatives, students and villagers can develop skills to solve problems locally and retain a sense of ownership over the solutions.

LEGO, the LEGO logo, MINDSTORMS, and WeDo are trademarks of the LEGO Group. © 2011 The LEGO Group.