One-year anniversary of this blog

My first post was on 30 November 2012, so today this blog is one year old!

As I look back at one year of posts, I see that a lot of material has been about robots. I do teach a number of robotics engineering groups, but I find that robotic devices are relevant for my other engineering students as well: biomedical engineering, electronics engineering, information technology, computer science, etc. It also seems to me that even non-engineering students find robots interesting. After all, what would science fiction films be without them?

I also see that I have focused a lot on material for process descriptions. I find this text type comes up in every kind of course I teach - even my academic English groups. So much of what we write and read is some kind of process, so I think this is very relevant for our students. Reading texts, listening to videos, focusing on various aspects of writing, encouraging speaking/discussion - there are so many ways to focus on process description.

And another area I see a lot in my posts is information about innovation. ESP students are always interested in innovations, especially in their field, and they will of course be part of innovations in their professional lives. So any innovation provides material for the classroom.

Over the year I have shared material I have found, but there are a few websites in particular that I keep going back to for ideas for my courses. Here are the ones I've used the most (and the date of the post when I first mentioned them):

December 2012

• Engines of our Ingenuity radio program: http://www.uh.edu/engines/

• Technical word of the week newsletter: http://newsletter.thepyramidgroup.biz/

March 2013

• The Innovations Report website: http://www.innovations-report.com/index.php

May 2013

• Planetary Radio:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/

June 2013

• Comics English: http://www.comicsenglish.com

July 2013

• Readlang (especially to recommend to students): http://readlang.com/

September 2013

• News in levels (especially for my lower level students): http://www.newsinlevels.com/

And many posts with material from the BBC news website, section technology:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology

During the year I have gotten positive feedback from many areas: readers of this blog, colleagues, other teacher bloggers - but most importantly from my students. They have usually been very enthusiastic about the material I've used in class, and they're very motivated to give me further suggestions.

For the future -- I'm always looking for articles, videos and websites on topics that engage my students, and lately some of my students have given me suggestions about website they've found that had news they were interested in. So I'll be using my students' suggestions more, and continue to indicate what we did with the material. If you know of other interesting websites and material, please let me know and I'll post it here.

RoboRoach: innovation and ethics

Photo copyright Backyard Brains

On 22 March 2013 my post was about Biobots - cyborg cockroaches fitted with a wireless control system and used to find victims of disasters such as earthquakes. I mentioned in that post that my students discussed ideas for further uses of such a biobot.

One use now available - which did not come up in that discussion - is implanting a wireless control on a cockroach in order to teach children about neural microstimulation.

This is the RoboRoach, developed by Backyard Brains, and described on their website as "... the world's first commercially available cyborg. With our RoboRoach you can briefly wirelessly control the left/right movement of a cockroach by microstimulation of the antenna nerves. The RoboRoach is a great way to learn about neural microstimulation, learning, and electronics."

The RoboRoach is available as a kit which children can order to implant the device themselves, and carry out the microstimulation experiment. It is available for $99.99 each, and is marketed to children and school classes.

Website of Backyard Brains: https://backyardbrains.com/

Information about RoboRoach: https://www.backyardbrains.com/products/roboroach

The innovation is quite interesting, and it generated a discussion in my classes about further innovations using similar technology. The website contains a lot of information about the control device itself and about the "surgery" necessary to implant the device. The latter is also explained on a video, also on the website. These sources are great material for process description, both written and spoken.

Video with surgery instructions: http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/RoboRoach_Surgery

But another aspect of the RoboRoach is that of the ethical concerns it raises. Some of these concerns are dealt with on the website, as comments about criticism. The criticisms noted and responded to are:

• This is simply a toy, not a scientific instrument
•  Modifying a living creature to make a toy is wrong
• The RoboRoach is pseudoscience
• This enables and encourages kids to harm animals

Ethical considerations:

http://wiki.backyardbrains.com/Ethical_Issues_Regarding_Using_Invertebrates_in_Education

My students found these ethical questions to be one of the most interesting aspects of this innovation. The groups I used this with were Electronics/Business, Biomedical Engineering and Robotics Engineering groups.

Although no one thought it was unethical to harm roaches (we do that anyway, don't we?), my students thought this could perhaps eventually lead to experiments using other animals, for example cats or dogs. Many felt it is okay for such experiments to be conducted in school under the supervision of a teacher, but that making this device available for children to experiment at home could lead to less educational uses. My students had a lively debate about where such experimentation would end, and whether we should create guidelines for eventual uses or stop it now.

I found the material about this innovation to be extremely useful for:

• Process Description - of the device and of the surgery to implant the device
• Discussion of impact of the engineering innovation
• Ethics discussion on the uses of the device
• Debate about the pros and cons of experimentation with invertebrates

For further material, there is an article about the RoboRoach in Popular Science:
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-12/how-build-your-own-cockroach-cyborg 

Small car for city use

Photo copyright Lit Motors

Lit Motors has developed the C-1, a "fully-enclosed, all electric vehicle that is a motorcycle in all but name," according to an article on BBC News website (section Future). The article describes the vehicle as a "hi-tech, streamlined egg on two wheels."

Link to article: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130630-super-shrinking-the-city-car

My engineering students are always interested in innovations relating to cars, and this article presents not only interesting information about the innovation, but also different kinds of language work.

The information focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of this vehicle (which students can add to) and presents the pros and cons of the C-1 being classified as a motorcycle or not. In this description, there is a lot of language referring to size and comparison. For example:

• most
• twice as many
• cut in half
• less / more
• fewer / more
• very few
• halving the length / width
• much less so than

In addition, the description includes useful technical vocabulary for cars, and vocabulary useful for the text type of process description. This includes the kinds of examples I tell my students to use so that a non-engineer would understand the description. For example:

• Imagine if you could cut the size of a car in half, ...
• ... looks like a hi-tech, streamlined egg on two wheels.
• A spinning disc has a tendency to stay upright, just like a child's spinning top.
• If you were ever made to hold a spinning bicycle wheel horizontally at school then you will have experienced the physics at work.

Finally, there is a good variety of linking and transition words for students to notice, and examples of modals and "if" clauses.

The article refers to an earlier innovation - the Smart Fortwo - so I showed a picture of each vehicle and had students discuss the pros and cons of each (which would they rather drive and why; which would be more efficient on the road, etc.).

In general, my students found this topic very interesting, and the short, focused article was workable even for my lower-intermediate groups.

Great source of videos for the classroom

The website FORA-TV (conference and event video) has hundreds of videos for every type of interest. The videos are categorized into the areas of business, environment, politics, science, technology and culture. And within each of these areas, there is a further breakdown of topics. For example, in "technology" there is: internet, new media, start-ups, personal technology, wireless, computing, engineering and CEOs.

http://fora.tv

The times of the videos range from about 10 minutes to over 30 minutes. A few are an hour, but not too many. The narrators, of course, have various accents and speaking styles.

One I chose for my students (from June 2013) was a topic from the section "engineering" called Robots Among Us, presented by Chad Jenkins. He talks about the types of robots that are now a part of our lives. The time is 14:12.

http://fora.tv/2013/06/13/Chad_Jenkins_Robots_Among_Us

The types of robots he refers to include those used in space, the laboratory, the military, in the home, for disaster relief, as well as self-driving cars, humanoid robots and personal (service) robots.

Students can focus on the particular robots that interest them, or are related to their field of engineering. Discussion can focus on the state-of-the-art, or on implications for the future.

I think teachers (and students) will be able to find videos in any topic area that interests them.