February is CTE Month!
CTE Month, created by the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), is designed to celebrate CTE and bring awareness to the benefits of career and technical education for all students of all ages. CTE, at its core, seeks to blend academics with real-world experiences to develop critical thinking and 21st century skills to create students ready to participate fully in the workforce of tomorrow. The VEX CTE Workcell enables teachers and students to continue their learning along the CTE pathway, in an accessible, affordable, and hands-on way.
VEX CTE Workcell
The VEX CTE Workcell enables students to use a 6-Axis Robotic Arm within a fully-automated Workcell to move, sort, and manipulate objects. Often, interacting with a robotic arm requires a full-size, large-scale arm, and access to the space and funding to bring one to your school. The CTE Workcell was designed specifically to give students the same learning experiences, but with a more affordable option that fits on a desk. Now, bringing CTE into your school is just as easy as bringing any other VEX platform into your classroom.
The small footprint of VEX CTE means that students can work in small groups with their own 6-Axis Arm or CTE Workcell build, enhancing the hands-on nature of their learning in powerful ways. The 6-Axis Robotic Arm is pre-built, and the CTE STEM Lab Units begin by just using the 6-Axis Arm on a Tile by itself. Students can begin by manually moving the 6-Axis Arm, something that is only possible because of its small scale. This enables students to interact with the 6-Axis Arm along the x, y, and z-axes, before beginning to code, making the abstract concept of the Cartesian coordinate system tangible.
The learning trajectory of the CTE Workcell STEM Lab Units guides teachers and students through a sequential, scaffolded curriculum. As students' knowledge grows, their builds get physically more complex. The first course, Introduction to the 6-Axis Arm, begins with manual movements, to explore how the 6-Axis Arm moves in space. They progress to using a Teach Pendant to control its movement, to using code to build more complex behaviors. Students explore using the Magnet Pickup Tool to manipulate objects, as well as the Pen Holder Tool to draw with precision. By the end of the first Course, students tackle an open-ended, real-world challenge to automate sorting and palletizing.
In Course 2, students incorporate the EXP Brain into their builds, and learn about the role of a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) as their foundation for adding other components like sensors, conveyors, and pneumatics. The second half of the course gives students the opportunity to engage in a series of open-ended challenges that build in complexity and apply their learning from both courses to pack and ship various products to fulfill shipping manifests.
Educator Reactions to VEX CTE
At the 2024 VEX Robotics Educators Conference, we did workshops with the 6-Axis Arm, and had educators get to experience the CTE Workcell first hand. Overall, participants were excited and amazed at the precision of movement, and how much was possible with just the 6-Axis Arm itself! I had middle school teachers sharing how they want to use the 6-Axis Arm to bring abstract concepts like graphing and the Cartesian coordinate system to life. Being able to physically see where the 6-Axis Arm moves when coordinates are entered not only helps solidify student learning, but also gives a real-world example of how mathematical concepts can be applied.
Educators in the workshop worked collaboratively to solve a challenge and explore the 6-Axis Arm. Several commented on how differently each person in the group approached the same challenge. That gave us a great opportunity to talk about the collaboration and communication skills that students build and develop by having to work together to complete the activities. Critical thinking and collaborative problem-solving are particularly important when working through the open-ended challenge units in the courses. There are so many ways that each challenge could be solved, and students spend time learning and practicing a problem-solving process, highlighting that connection between critical thinking and hands-on learning that is at the heart of CTE.
At the ACTE conference in December, I had the opportunity to share the CTE Workcell with a number of educators, and one of the things that sparked the most interest was Switch in the context of CTE! While giving a demonstration of the CTE Workcell and sharing the project itself, I began to convert individual blocks, as well as loops to Switch. Upon seeing the Python commands unfold in the Switch blocks, teachers very quickly saw the possibilities for differentiation with their students. A teacher even commented that this would be a “total game changer” in her classroom!
This CTE Month, think about the ways that CTE could help you to bring real-world, hands-on learning experiences to your students and school community. Check out the VEX CTE Workcell and the CTE STEM Lab Courses to see how you can continue your STEM and CS journey, with VEX CTE.
Already teaching with VEX CTE? Share your stories in the PD+ Community. Join us at this year's VEX Robotics Educators Conference to try out the CTE Workcell for yourself at one of the hands-on workshops! Want to talk more about how CTE can work for you? Schedule a 1-on-1 Session and we’d be happy to talk about helping you incorporate CTE into your setting.