(upbeat music)

Now, I'm very proud to have the panel up here. I'm going to allow them to introduce themselves in a minute. But first, I wanted to talk about the great applicants we had for our VEX Robotics Educators Conference. The way the conference has grown is quite remarkable. Last year, I invited a number of people to come and speak, based on my personal connections and relationships. This year, we opened up the opportunity for others to apply to speak at the conference. We received so many wonderful applications that, unfortunately, we didn't have enough slots for everyone, given the workshops and other activities.

To address this, we decided to create a panel. Each of the panelists has amazing stories and experiences that we wanted to share with you. However, we couldn't extend the conference to four days to accommodate everyone. We're very excited to have this diverse panel with us today, representing various experiences in robotics, STEM, and computer science. Our panel includes individuals from academia, nonprofits, and classroom teaching, offering a mix of perspectives. I believe you'll gain a lot from today's presentation.

One thing to note is that we won't have a Q&A session at the end due to a limited number of microphones. We have two microphones up here, including mine. So, at the end, when the panel leaves the stage, feel free to come up and ask them questions directly. If you have a question for Arif or anyone else on our panel, please approach them at the end of the presentation.

We will start with introductions. I'll ask the panel to give a quick introduction of themselves. Dr. Arif, we'll start with you and then continue down the line.

Hi, my name is Arif Sirinterlikci. I'm a professor at a small college near Pittsburgh, Robert Morris University. Thank you.

Hi, my name is Belen. I'm really glad to be here today. I'm from Argentina, Messi's land. (chuckles) I am a teacher at a technical high school and a robotics software developer.

Hi, my name is Marquita Jones. I'm an assistant principal at Phoenix STEM Military Academy. Not in Phoenix, it's in Chicago, Illinois. (audience chuckles) Just to get that straight. (chuckles) I'm so happy to be here, and my team is ranked 14th. Whoo! There you go.

Hey, I'm Bahiy Watson. I'm the executive director of a nonprofit organization called The 1881 Institute, named after the year the Tuskegee Institute was founded. We prepare underrepresented populations for careers in engineering and advanced manufacturing. I'm also a mechanical engineer with 25 years of experience in the aerospace industry.

Hi, everybody. My name is Margarita Flores-Sicich. First, I'd like to thank VEX for allowing me to be up here. I am a high school teacher in the Austin area, and I teach Project Lead The Way, engineering, computer science, chemistry, and other subjects. I've also worked with drones and am a coach in FTC robotics, so thank you.

One thing I wanted to mention about Arif is that he helped us develop our Workcell, the CTE product you see out there, which we have different workshops on. He consulted with us during the development of the first iteration and has continued to work with us on it.

Thank you all for being here and for your contributions to this conference. We appreciate your time and expertise.

So if that's a product that really sparked your interest, or CTE education is something that's really interested in, I would encourage you to seek out Arif and have a chat with him.

So, without any further ado, Belen, we're gonna start with you. What is an inclusive learning environment, and how does VEXcode VR help you create an inclusive learning environment?

Okay. Hello again. An inclusive learning environment is one that fosters diversity, equity, and accessibility for all, regardless of the background. VEXcode VR gave my students the chance to have a good education, learn how to code, grow, and learn about teamwork. When I started, one huge advantage of VEX VR was that I took a free certification. This helped me as a guide to start my classes without a financial barrier. That is a very important support, with lessons, different levels, plans, or maybe a place to talk or share ideas with other educators.

Especially in developing countries in Latin America, like Argentina where I live, we don't have much money, so it's hard to get physical robots. That is why VEXcode VR is a great key to creating an inclusive environment. In my robotics classes, I define three important moments. First, at the beginning when I announce the challenge of the day, which is a great moment to get students excited and interested. Secondly, when they work in teams to solve the challenge with different playgrounds. Finally, when they try to improve their algorithm and learn from other students. Addressing the education gap is crucial for ensuring equal opportunities for all students.

Thank you.

That's terrific. I actually had a wonderful conversation yesterday with a partner in Paraguay talking about how you use VEXcode VR to train over 300 teachers using our free playgrounds, as you mentioned, and the impact that has had on students in Paraguay. So thank you very much. Those are very insightful comments that you made there.

Margarita, we hear this term computational thinking all the time. So that's your area of research in computational thinking. Along those lines, what is computational thinking? And in what ways would VEXcode VR, virtual robotics, contribute to our understanding of computational thinking?

Okay, thank you. Yes. In my spare time, I failed to mention that in addition to being a high school teacher and FTC robotics coach, I'm working on my PhD. (chuckles) Hence the reason I never sleep, right?

Sleep's overrated. (chuckles) Yeah, sleep is so overrated. But what is CTE? That's my area of specialty. In particular, I picked that area with VEXcode Robotics, with the virtual robotics. What is CTE? Well, it can go way back in history, right? We can take it all the way back to Polia in the math heuristics of how to solve problems. We can take it to Papert, all these names in the past. But basically, the way we think of CTE skills are the skills that come from computer science, okay?

When you learn computer science, when you become a computer engineer or computer scientist, you learn how to break down problems into steps, which is algorithmic thinking. You learn how to take what's necessary and leave the rest, which is called abstraction. You learn to recognize patterns that might help you solve that problem or future problems with similar patterns. You learn how to evaluate something: How good did the solution come out? Did it work? Could it have been better, faster, or more efficient in any way? You learn how to generalize, which is like, "Now that I know how to solve that problem, how can I use what I know there somewhere else," right?

So, even though it has all those backgrounds, it's really a skill that everybody needs to know.

It's not just computer sciences or people that work in robotics or engineering, not at all, not anymore, at least, right? Now it's something that everybody really needs to know. Okay, all ages starting at a very, very young age because the world is changing and the demands of the future workforce are changing. We don't know what even what they're gonna be, but we know these kids need to know how to think. And these are very good ways of thinking and problem solving.

So what we do know from research is, if you take a computer science class, especially if it's aligned with a robotics also, they develop these skills, they get better at this kind of thinking. And what we also know from research is that these skills transfer. In other words, so they solve a robotics problem right now. There may be something else in their life, in another class in math, and another subject in life where these kind of skills will help them also. So they're very transferable.

Let's see, I could keep going on and on, but basically what I like about the virtual robotics is that it really lowers the barriers to entry and cost and also for novices. You take away the cost, you take away the need for heavy-duty syntax and stick with block-based at the beginning, just at the beginning, right? And you lower those barriers, you make it equitable and accessible to many, many people, right? So that kids don't drop out of that STEM pipeline early on. We need to keep them there. The world needs problem solvers.

So anyway, sorry, I kind of got long-winded.

No, you're good. No problem, no problem. Great answer. Thank you for that.

Also, just one thing to add to that, Dr. David Winthrop did a presentation yesterday. He wrote a paper back in 2015 where he talked about that all modern-day and professional mathematicians and scientists use computational thinking. So if you're not teaching your students computational thinking, you're not teaching them real world math and science. So I thought that was a very important point, and it supplements everything that, Margarita, you just said right there.

All right, changing the focus now, Bahiy, Industry 4.0 something we hear about all the time. What is Industry 4.0, and how do we prepare our students for Industry 4.0? So Industry 4.0 is basically just the fourth industrial revolution. And I like to talk about it in terms of the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. So just real quick, the first one was where, instead of having a man go out there and till a field, now we can get a machine to do it. Second industrial revolution was about more about mass production. The third industrial revolution was about, okay, automation and electronics. And now this fourth industrial revolution is about the integration of artificial intelligence.

For us at the 1881 Institute, for us to get students into that fourth industrial revolution is basically using what we learned through the first and third industrial revolution as building blocks. So what does that mean? That means actually understanding machines and mechanisms, understanding electronics. So for our nonprofit organization, the way that we judge ourselves, people ask us, "Well, what's your metrics of success?" Basically, do we get students into these careers, right?

And we found out that the best way, we have students who I guess I kind of give you a little history about us. We started probably around 2015. Our goal was to actually become a STEM-based charter high school. So we're based in New Orleans, and our application was denied by the Orleans Parish School Board. Well, long story short, we sort of got into the workforce development area. And what we decided to do in 2015, we were saying, "Well, why don't we just do afterschool programs, and we'll just do robotics," right? So there was this big thing about FIRST and all that, and I felt like it was too much money, so we jumped into VEX.

We were doing VEX Robotics at maybe five rec centers around New Orleans, and we were all connecting virtually through Google Meet, and this is before the pandemic. But what I'm finding out is we have a lot of high schools now who call us, want students to come to us, train in workforce development. So we'll do, like, at our shop, we'll do like woodworking, we'll do machining, we'll do computer science, we'll do electronics, do all these things. But what we're finding out is the folks who persevere and actually get into these jobs were the ones who started with us doing VEX Robotics. It's something about doing robotics that they learned this perseverance that others don't get.

I mean, just recently, there's a young man who started with us when he was like 12, and now he's gonna have like a job shadowing opportunity now that he's like 19, 18-19. So he's got the job shadowing opportunity with a company. And actually when he used to come to us after school, well, we thought, well, we would always have Fried Chicken Fridays. We thought he was just there for the fried chicken.

(audience chuckles)

To be honest. But he was never really that engaged, but he still got the same thing that others did, or even more. So I would say that starting off with this arena in robotics is really key to getting students into Industry 4.0 careers.

Thank you, and I definitely would've stayed for Fried Chicken Fridays, no doubt.

Now that's a good segue into my next question for Arif. Obviously, as you walk around the VEX Robotics competition here, you're gonna see a lot of mobile robots, but VEX is not just mobile robots. So how can VEX be used to teach something like factory automation, which obviously ties into Industry 4.0?

Well, I'll try not to mess up. I hope not, yeah.

(audience chuckles)

I have given some handouts, and mostly we have the copies of the handout. If you don't have it, you can contact VEX, and we can email you a copy of that. My answers are on that handout, most of it. So a few years ago I was involved in the development of the VEX V5 Workcell and CTE afterwards. I teach manufacturing engineering. Our program is the only manufacturing engineering program in Pennsylvania, and from Virginia to almost to Indiana, we are the only program in a large radius. Unfortunately, there are only 26 accredited programs. So that was the commercial.

(audience chuckles)

Having said that, in manufacturing or industrial engineering, we use simulation programs to see what happens in a factory, like flow of the material, any problems that are arising within the system, and we try to control it. So for that, we try to model the material flow, the whole factory basically behaviors in simulation programs like Arena or even in 3D these days. But with the new VEX systems, V5 and the CTE, we could make that accessible to high schools or pre-college level. So you could build all sorts of manufacturing activities or environments using the newly-developed tools from VEX.

And again, we all, we are also talking to VEX and encouraging them to further develop these systems. I can give you a few examples here. First of all, we can, using these new systems, teach different source of manufacturing systems. You see a Workcell, we can change that and build a production line. It can be slightly different, and with the tile structure, you should be able to interface different structures and modify them, and it's very adaptable and flexible. We can teach factory layouts, not only different source of manufacturing systems, different layouts, and again, workcell and production line, as well as mass production or small batch, multi-product production. We can either manufacturing system types or layout types, and different source of automation can be represented with these systems. So it has the power to almost emulate all sorts of things in quick order.

Often we think the simulation programs are easy to handle, but with this way you can actually have the tactile experience and you can observe at firsthand as if you are in a factory. Now, I listed on my handout a lot of different things. Besides the six-axis robot, at Robert Morris we have built five other industrial robot configurations. So you have the power of doing that, and actually that'll be within the realm of the first system, the V5. But then you can teach integration, different machines being integrated via sensors, communicating and making up all of these systems.

We can simulate material handling and storage. Again, all sorts of possibilities are there. Assembly operations, maybe VEX robots can assemble in the near future. And with all of those things, you can produce data, and you can see the Python with datalogging. I'm using some of these sensors to develop curriculum for mechanical engineering at the college level. We are using VEX sensors and building machines, building lab equipment actually, with very low cost, rather than spending hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are using much less money and building our own mechanical engineering equipment. And again, it is also very good for open source.

So all sorts of things you can build, mimic factory, automation, the layouts, the different source of manufacturing environments. You can also, again, with the help of these sensors, you should be able to track what you're doing, figure out the cycle times, the tech times, throughput rates, things like that. So yeah, you should be able to produce a lot of meaningful information, again, for the early college level or highly-performing high school students. Again, it's very flexible, very adaptable, and you can do much more. And my handout has a few more things listed. If you have interest, we can share more information with you.

So a couple things I just wanna touch upon what Arif said right there, thank you for the answer. If you go to Arif's lab, I've been lucky enough to have been there where he teaches the industrial manufacturing he's talking about, there's big, huge robotic arms there. And to our earlier question that we talked about with an inclusive learning environment, that's hard to scale in a classroom setting. So what we really tried to do, and Arif touched upon this, was bring factory automation in at a level that you can actually do in your classroom. And that's what we've tried to show off with our CTE workshops.

But the other thing that he mentioned in talking about teaching, I think it's such a relevant thing because all of us shop on Amazon now. And you've got Prime Delivery, and you get your package the next day, or you get it within three days or whatever. And how does that happen, right? That's a great question. Like how did you get the package here so quickly? How does that actually happen? All of that is a result of what Arif was talking about with factory automation. That's the opportunity that you have to teach that in your classroom.

Okay, so-

May I say one quick point, if you don't mind.

You may.

We have just bought a cobot through our Nation Science Foundation grant. Let's say it's $35,000. It came from Denmark. But if you buy a CTE or a VEX V5 system, you should be able to get many of those, and then again-

The robots working together, yeah.

Correct, makes it much more accessible even at the college level then.

Yeah. I'll stop (indistinct).

Yeah, thank you.

So Marquita-

Mm-hm.

I've talked about student voice a lot. I would like to hear what you think student voice means to you, and how you use VEX to help achieve student voice.

So I would say that student voice means a lot, especially to a high school. It's a shame, I have to say this, but we really didn't even think about student voice until after the pandemic.

We implemented project-based learning because students were not engaged in the traditional curriculum basically after the pandemic. So we implemented PBL. As a result of project-based learning and our STEM program, VEX was just a natural fit. So the student voice became so important because the solutions to these problems were coming from the students, teaching students cognitive thinking skills, computational thinking skills.

A lot of teachers at first were uncomfortable because they removed the teacher from the expert to the facilitation of knowledge and skills. So student voice led to an increase in engagement, student opportunities after school, internships, and it actually changed the school culture because students started to voice the changes that need to happen for us to become a real STEM school.

Oh, that's fantastic. Thank you for that. Please don't apologize for not thinking about after the pandemic, because I didn't think about (indistinct) until after I left teaching. So-

(Marquita laughs)

If you saw my keynote, you saw that I have to put an apology letter to my former students in my second book. So please, please don't apologize at all.

Margarita, back to you, you mentioned transfer in your opening remarks about computational thinking. Of course, transfer is the holy grail of education, right? We all want our students to be able to transfer their knowledge across different domains and different situations. And that's really what we're looking for in computational thinking is to be able to apply, as you mentioned, those problem-solving skills, not just on one specific problem, but on a myriad of different problems. So talk about how you can achieve that within the VEX Robotics ecosystem.

Yes, absolutely. First, let me tell you the story of how I came across VEX. It was COVID and I was teaching computer science, right? Virtual, they were at home, I was in the classroom. We were all virtual, yeah. Yeah, we were all virtual. And it was like, "How do I teach computer science over the internet," right? I came across VEXcode VR and that just changed everything. And so that put that in my mind, I started to explore more and more, these VEX products and all that they have to offer.

So I think that when you say transfer, I'm gonna say it in two ways. One is that there's transfer within the VEX products because they start so early. And I'm not familiar with all of them. I want to become familiar with more of them. Well, good thing you're here. Yeah, definitely, right? Yeah, definitely. I got a lot to learn, in other words. So because they have the whole K-12 and more, spectrum of products, there's transfer from one age group to the other to the other to the other, and they just keep getting better and better.

I don't know if any of you are teachers in computer science. I know that before we used to like take Alice, that's a little software package and let them train on that. And then after that, let's try JERU, another software package. But it never really came together in a nice way in a continuous fashion. What I like about what they have here to offer is that it is continuous, it flows, so there's transfer that way already, as they build their skills from kindergarten to first, all the way to end of high school and beyond with the VEX product.

So there's that transfer, but then there's the other transfer, which is like, can it transfer to math, can it transfer to physics, can it transfer to anything, life decisions, you know? And yes, it can, the research is showing very, very much so that it can. And that's where I start to specialize in my dissertation. I wanna see and explore that transfer. So that's what I'm specializing in. I'm gonna be using VEXcode VR, they'll learn that, the participants. And then I'm gonna give them something very different in that it's not coding, it's not. It's more real-world type of problems, transfer.

They're gonna still need the same kind of knowledge, the algorithmic skills, the abstraction, et cetera. And we'll see how my research goes. I am really interested in that transfer component. Studies are coming out slowly, and they're very positive so far.

Thank you for mentioning how you came across VEXcode VR during COVID. Tim Friez, our vice president of educational technology, will be doing a keynote presentation tomorrow. He'll actually go into detail telling that story about the creation of VEXcode VR and the results of it. So I highly encourage you to please participate in that session.

I loved how you mentioned transfer in terms of everything coming together and balancing between those different software packages. Dr. Jimmy Lin, who's floating around here somewhere, might actually be doing a workshop now, but he's our new director of computer science education. He just had a paper published about a month ago that talked about the VEX Continuum and how, when that transfer isn't easy, that's when actually students drop out of the STEM pipeline. You actually mentioned this in your first comments, Margarita, about that, so that's a very important thing, and I thank you for bringing that back up again.

We're gonna go back now to Marquita, and I would like to ask you, you talked about the creation of your school, not in Arizona, but in Chicago. How can VEX and STEM transform a classroom and a school? So I'll start with the school first. In a high school, it's hard for teachers to collaborate and think about the standards that are being taught in one content area when they're primarily focused on their content area. What VEX did for us was actually make collaboration possible, like amongst all teachers, where they were sharing standards and sharing units, saying, "This is what I'm teaching. How can these skills be transferred or applied in your class?" Students would take skills from math, engineering, the research they did in English, and create a robot that solves some type of problem in the community. It was amazing, and VEX did that for us. They turned learning from theoretical to practical and hands-on for the students. The results are just, you can see it everywhere from standardized testing to in the classroom, increased attendance because the students love to be in class now.

I love the increased attendance. That's something that's such a problem right now is getting more students engaged and keeping them in school. So I love to hear that. Thank you very much.

Let's go to Bahiy. There's been many different approaches to try to close the achievement gap, some people call it an opportunity gap, and broaden participation in STEM fields. Some of these approaches have different levels of success. In your opinion, and you talked about your experiences being an engineer, what is the best approach to broad participation in STEM and also into manufacturing?

Well, my opinion may be a little controversial. That's okay. But-

We embrace controversy. Okay. So I'll go back to a lot of the students that we had participating in our afterschool programs. So what we do, we sort of layer our programs. At the foundation is our afterschool and in-school programs where we go and recruit students. Then we put them in some type of apprenticeship program that will run, whether it's a pre-apprenticeship or an apprenticeship. What we were seeing was that a lot of the students that participated in our VEX clubs after school were getting into college, and this was around the pandemic. They were getting into college and then not interested, right, in what was happening at the college. One of the reasons was the isolation, right? The isolation due to the pandemic. But second, what we found out was that a lot of the students were used to being in this team environment, collaborating, right?

And now they go into a school where everything is in books. They have to be by themselves, they're always in this book. And they envisioned more of what we did after school, and it wasn't that. So where I found the most success for a lot of our students was getting them into trades, right? Those trades that are adjacent to manufacturing. So whether it was welding, whether it's machining, whether it's, they even have electrician trades, right? Getting them into those trades, at least they got the chance to do those hands-on things that are not really there at some of the schools, at least in our ecosystem, right?

So once they got into these trades, now they have an interest, okay, "Well how can I increase my pay," right? Okay, now you have to go to this four-year institution. So now they have more of a vested interest. Okay, now they're ready to get into these books. We found that that was a much better route than sending them straight to a four-year institution. Now there are some four-year institutions where the engineering technology realm, they have an engineering technology. I'm a proponent for that, some people may not be. But the engineering technology is more of a practical, it should be more practical and hands-on. So from my opinion, that's where we've seen the most success with our students.

I love that answer, and I love how you're really painting a picture for students of where they can go in their lives and how they can excel in their lives and in different pathways that they could have. I think that's fantastic.

Belen, I wanted to ask you, and we touched upon this a little bit already, but how can VEX be used to help educators meet the diverse learning needs and styles of our students?

Okay, can you repeat the question please? I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question?

Sure, sure. How can VEX Robotics help teachers meet the diverse learning needs and styles of our students?

Okay. For me, really important, first, migrating hands-on experience that students can apply concepts in the real world. Building and programming robots is just not about learning a STEM concept. It's about hands-on experience that let the students see those concepts come to life. So secondly, offering visual programming interface, they can use blocks to call, and that simplify and it's easier to start calling. So one of the cool things about this platform is that VEX offers visual programming interface. So it's really easy and fun for students, they can use blocks to piece together the program. So for me that is really important.

Then with flexibility to adapt the learning experience, and there is a wide range of projects, lessons, and activities to do in the VEX curriculum. So there is plenty of flexibility to adapt the learning experience to different levels and preferences. And finally providing soft skills. So it's not just about coding, working on robotics projects in teams. In teams, they learn a lot of soft skills too. So collaborating to design, to build, to program robots, promote communication, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities. So these are crucial in today's world.

I loved your comment about the curriculum, that just warms my heart because obviously curriculum is where I live most of my time. So talking about how the curriculum allows you to be flexible with your students and address different learning styles of students, that was music to my ears. Thank you very much. I appreciate, selfishly, I appreciate that.

(Marquita chuckles)

All right, Arif, what is the significance of research? We've heard Margarita talk a lot about research and what the research is telling us. But I would like to ask you, what's the significance of research in STEM and robotics education, and how can it help us inform our teaching practices?

Well, I think I'm gonna share the answer with Margarita, right?

Sure, yeah. Because I saw both of our names on it.

(Marquita laughs)

So, because I like to throw you a couple of curveballs, Arif, keep you on your toes a little bit. All right, thank you. That's what I'm here for. So Margarita already talked about computational thinking. I think that's a critical part of the equation here. It'll help us; the research in robotics education will help us develop curriculum naturally for computational thinking, which is a big part. You can use VR without getting influenced by the physics or actual robots and things like that and the environment. We all are familiar with the low-running battery messing up your robot's performance, sensors not working well, slowing down, maybe making a turn rather than going straight. I think computational thinking will be impacted by it in terms of a lot of research being done in that field.

Since I'm wearing the manufacturing person hat, I think with the opportunities in conducting research with this type of robots or robotic education, we can definitely enhance manufacturing education. I mentioned already at the college level, but we can also recruit students into manufacturing fields. It's known to be dirty, slimy, grimy, whatever you wanna call it, it's a tough field. But you can see all of the good things happening in the manufacturing field. We have the 3D scanner, we are using AR, VR, robotics, AI, ML. All of the good things happening are applicable to manufacturing. I think with Industry 4.0, industrial automation, different concepts of it, and product development with IoT. I feel that some of the things we are doing here with the robotics tools, we can also employ them in product development and prototyping. A lot of startup companies are doing that.

So all of that said and done, we can definitely incorporate some of the things I mentioned here based on the robotics education research and spread what we learn from the robotics education research into a greater area like Industry 4.0, prototyping, product development with IoT, things like that because we have the tools for it. And again, what we learn from the robotics education research can be scalable or transferable also, or translated to many more fields. So I feel like not only can we improve our teaching. Besides the research, actually the field experiences, what we learned through real-life experiences, they matter as well. But we can always, again, apply this to a larger area.

Excellent. That's excellent. Now, just because of time, I'm gonna ask our last two questions that we had everybody in the panel I asked to prepare an answer for. So we're gonna jump into that now, and we're gonna start down at the end with Margarita, and then we'll work our way back here to me. So the first question for everyone in the panel is, "Looking ahead, what do you think are the future trends in robotics education and how should we, as teachers, prepare for them?"

Oh my, there's so many. I've got a long list here that I wrote down. I'll cut you off, don't worry. (chuckles) But I'll give a few. Just AI, machine learning, specialized robotics, and within that, you can think of tiny robots, robots that are pneumatic, robots that are hydraulic, robots that are inside the body, medical use, surgical use. How about robots that don't use this gravity, but they're in outer space. So the whole gravity thing is a whole different issue there. Right? And so on and so on. So robots are just getting started, right? So what we need to do is get these kids ready with the thinking practices, competencies to be ready for whatever comes down the pipe. Focus on the thinking, not necessarily the robot.

I like that a lot. Thank you. Yeah, I would say I think the future of robotics education will look a lot more like industry. You can see that a lot of what you see in industry is now starting to be incorporated into even a lot of VEX products.

So I feel like education will begin to mirror what you've done in industry, meaning... So basically, I'm not an educator, even though I'm at the educator's conference. (chuckles)

We won't tell anyone. Don't worry. Don't tell anyone. Yeah. But actually, as a mechanical engineer working in industry, I've had to train a lot of individuals. And I always approached it to where I felt like I was bringing industry to the schools, where educators were telling me I needed to bring more of education into industry, and we sort of butted heads. So I feel like a lot of our success now is because I felt like I was right, that industry should be brought more into schools and should basically deliver a lot of what employers want.

Terrific. Thank you. For me, especially as an administrator, I think focusing on the process of learning rather than the right answer, because I think in the future there is no one right answer. So students and instructors focusing on the process of learning, the engineering design process rather than, oh, did they get the right answer?

Love that. Thank you. Okay, for me, it is important to, maybe teachers should learn some basic stuff about AI, as my partner say. So this can be used in robotic projects. So learn how to train AI models and computer vision to robots so they can see, or make a robot that can do stuff or those different tasks using AI. And it's really important also to teachers, make sure everyone feels included in class, no matter where they come from or who they are. So fostering diversity is really necessary to bridge the education gap. And we talked about research a moment ago, there's a lot of research to support that diverse teams actually solve problems better. So thank you for mentioning that.

Well, I'll see a different direction. You see, Elon Musk is trying to place a chip in somebody's brain. A few decades ago they have developed the thinking cap, and they could map brain activity. They even use something like that, a sensory device that picks up your brain activity to control a mouse or something. When the monkeys were using a computer without even moving the mouse, they were just thinking. And, so all sorts of things. I think the robotics is, or the ideas of robotics are part of the robotics will be integrated into living beings. And it may sound like a Frankenstein science, but there were areas like biomechatronics. So you can have a living being and mechatronic entity being integrated or working together.

Another thing is that the digital beings, we started talking about digital twins. And again, in the area of robotics, you will see some of that digital dimension. We may have our avatars like in the movie of, you know, "Avatar" and stuff like that. But they're already hiring some of these digital beings as actors and stuff like that. They're being hired and playing roles in commercials and photo shoots and stuff like that. And they're not real, I guess they are modeled by a human. And I see a lot of soft robotics and things like this. We were visiting a major research university, so a lot of soft robotics were being done. And all of that will be naturally regulated by AI, ML, things like that will have greater role than what we see today.

Excellent. We're gonna start with you, Arif, and then we'll go back down the opposite way for our last question for the panel. I love this question. If you had a gigantic billboard anywhere with anything on it, metaphorically speaking, getting the message out to millions or billions of people, so you had power over this billboard, what would it say, concerning STEM education and/or VEX Robotics and why? So what would you put on the billboard, Arif?

Like I said, I used to build animatronic robots in my summer camps with middle and high school students. I would take VEX pieces and modify them and combine with some other stuff.

So I felt like VEX gave me the opportunity of doing so many different things. I'll say a couple more words here. I will say without a bound or limitless or something like that, because I feel you can do so many things with it. I built a mushroom harvesting robot in my course project the other day. Or in the summer campus student build, an animatronic device that had an apple sitting on a plate and a worm peeking out. It was a very young student who came up with all sorts of things. So creativity, critical thinking, all sorts of different things. So without the limit. Without limits. Yeah, without limits or without a bound or something. Without, I like it. Yeah.

I thought you were gonna say buy Jason's book, but that was a pretty good answer. We'll go with that. Or buy your book. (laughs)

Go ahead please.

Okay, Unlock your STEM potential with VEX Robotics. Innovation is the bridge to the future. And VEX Robotics is the pathway to developing critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills. So join the STEM revolution and build tomorrow's world today.

Wonderful. Nice.

"Innovation: the bridge to the future." I am so stealing that. That is fantastic. Thank you very much.

So, first, disclosure, I would do a collaboration with Nike because it'd be "VEX, just do it." (Jason laughs) And then my second one is "STEM ready, future ready."

Excellent. Thank you, thank you.

I guess my billboard would say, "Don't ignore the trades as pathways to Industry 4.0 careers."

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Okay, well, I had a lot of them that were similar to Belen, so with potential. But here's one that at the risk of sounding cheesy, okay, I like this one, "VEX Robotics makes STEM superheroes."

Wow. Oh, Excellent. (chuckles) Nice, right? Excellent.

Well, I'm actually curious what you all would say at this point. So I would just like to say, I think all of you on our panel are also STEM superheroes, or Industry 4.0 superheroes, or whatever adjective you would like to put in front of it. But I think all of you offered your own perspective based upon your own experiences, and I thought that's why I was so much looking forward to this panel.

I wanna make sure I give the audience the opportunity to come up and ask you some questions, whether it's around computational thinking, whether it's around inclusion, whether it's around trades, or whatever your particular interest, or if you wanna ask them what they put on their billboard, either one, but thank you for that. I love that.

But thank you very much, panel. That was wonderful. Thank you.

(audience applauds)

(upbeat music)