Cedar Falls robotics coaches train Chinese teachers

High school teachers Kenton Swartley and Ron Hoofnagle, Neil Kruempel, a retired software developer, and Thomas Ore, a Deere product engineer, left for Shenzhen on Sunday accompanied by their former student and translator, Katie Yang.

“We’re kind of planning from scratch here,” Swartley said.

The Chinese partnership blossomed from a chance encounter between YaMing Yue, a businessman, and Yang’s mother, Min Zhang, at the 2011 world championships. Yue is the president of DaDaLeLe, an education company that arranges after-school robotics courses and activities.

“After he visited St. Louis, he was surprised by the whole system of volunteers who support the students,” Zhang said.

Zhang’s been working tirelessly across time zones to coordinate the trip.

“Though my daughter already graduated, I can help to build an international relationship so in the future we can work on a student exchange,” Zhang said.

DaDaLeLe already sends Chinese robotics teams to competitions in Europe, but YaMing realized he needed to train parents and teachers to support one at home. He’s paying to bring the Iowa coaches to China to host a two-day workshop for ten new Chinese teams.

“They’re so new with program that there aren’t really experienced teams around to help them out,” Swartley said.

Each coach will teach to his own expertise, incorporating elements of computer programming, designing and building robots and how to run a regional competition with “gracious professionalism.”

At American robotics competitions, teams receive a directive for a task the robot must accomplish. Teams have a few months to build a robot with a $4,000 budget from materials that can be bought off a store shelf.

“This competition is representative of what it’s really like to work in the engineering world,” Bruce Newendorp, a Swartdogs coach, said in a promotional video made by DaDaLeLe to show Chinese teachers. “When there’s not enough time, you don’t always know all the rules. You learn as you go, and you get lots of input.”

The coaches are expected to return Dec. 28.