At BotBall Training in Norman, OK

Students and teachers learn to build and program robots for the upcoming competition.

I’m having an excellent time this weekend working with 3 students from my school at the BotBall Educational Robotics Program training workshop in Norman, Oklahoma.  BotBall is one of the programs offered through the KISS Institute for Practical Robotics.  As stated on their website, “BotBall engages middle and high school aged students in a team-oriented robotics competition based on National Science Education Standards.”

BotBall has been around for more than a decade, and they introduce new technologies each year.  Last year was the first time that the game included the iRobot Create, which is just a stripped down Roomba vacuum that has been optimized for experimentation.  This year, they released a brand new processor and programming set-up.

If you are looking for a way to integrate robotics into your program, seriously consider BotBall.  Without giving away the details of the game (not all regions train on the same day), I’ll just say that BotBall 2009 brings the action into a whole new dimension.