CARL EDWARDS, right, and his son Nick will be helping Benicia Middle School students learn the science of robotics during an after-school program this fall. Alli Edwards photo

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Amid a plethora of updates at last week’s meeting of the Benicia Unified School District Board of Trustees, one item caught everybody’s attention.

Robots.

June Regis, district coordinator of Child Care Programs & Adult Education, introduced guest speaker Carl Edwards, Benicia parent and director of device engineering for Pandora Radio.

Edwards also serves as parent mentor for the robotics portion of the STEM — Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — after-school program that launches Wednesday at Benicia Middle School.

Regis said she wanted the middle school program “to be a focused program.” Edwards agreed, and added that it’s important for kids to learn in an “off-screen” environment.

“I really want to get them into things where they aren’t on the computer all the time,” he told trustees.

“Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat has this game that is called ‘Process Eliminatus.’ You find out where things are not.

“Give kids the chance to try computer science, and if they don’t like it, that’s OK, but make it fun. I don’t want to be like a CS teacher I had that threw books and desks at people and make you feel bad about doing something wrong.”

Edwards said he wants kids to learn the ground-up basics of robotics — “how lights work, switches, diodes, tools. Give them a chance to learn it.” And he brought props to illustrate what he wants to do to show the kids the basics of robotics.

The first was a basic model with lights “where they can just learn how to turn on lights, press a button, how to make that work. We’ll use switches at first, but then they’ll learn how to program that.

“When you go beyond that and you start upgrading this model, you’ll come into a robot that will be something similar to this little guy here.”

With that Edwards pulled a second, more advanced robot out of a box. He set it on the ground, and using his iPad and an application that he wrote maneuvered the robot around the room.

“That’s the type of fun stuff we want to bring,” he said. “We’ll keep it dynamic and fun, but we’ll learn during that period of time where the course needs to go.

“But it needs to be fun while they learn.”

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