服務故事

2019 marks the second year consecutive National Robotics Competition. Co-organized by ACF and Program the World Association (PTWA), this year, 114 teams participated, welcoming 248 students and teachers from across Taiwan. The competition, which took place for the first time in Taitung, was held at the Junyi School of Innovation. While it was as far as a 10-hour journey for some, the enrollment figures were still an increase from the previous year. Although the competition still recognized winning teams, it emphasizes that winning is not the competition's primary goal but rather the learning process. Founder of the National Robotics Competition, Alvin Su who is also Founder of PTWA and Professor of Computer Science and Information Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) envisions the competition to be a light-hearted co-learning experience; for it to take place in the remote east coast to encourage tech education in the area.

Sponsored by Pegatron Corporation to encourage participants to co-learn and progress with other teams, the 2019 competition requires all teams to use open-source software in which users can study, change, and distribute the software freely. Using open-source software enabled all teams to gain access to and analyze one another's coding strategies after the competition. The winning team was required to present their coding strategies and demonstrate how they succeeded, reinforcing the core values and spirit of the competition.

Several of the 2019 teams were participants in the 2018 competition. Repeat competitors demonstrated noticeable growth in terms of technique and the complexity of the choice of equipment – from ultrasound to infrared or store-bought motherboards to self-made. Su believes that the mission to promote tech education is not truly to promote learning coding but rather to learn to incorporate technology and AI into daily lives. It inspires youths to incorporate coding to support their interests, whether drawing, music, or cooking. Before founding the National Robotics Competition, Su would go to schools in remote with NCKU students to teach basic coding, which was when PTWA was founded. PTWA's vision is to promote and teach basic programming and the maker program in remote Taiwan. Technology is a tool that can minimize the gap between the rich and the poor. Su believes that bringing tech education to the remote Hualien-Taitung could give its youths the tools to change their futures.

PTWA also conducts Train the Trainer Programs so that teachers island-wide can receive training. To encourage more participants, Su designed a curriculum that makes teaching simple. Their hard work and advocacy echo the Ministry of Education (MOE) in the same direction. MOE now recognizes the importance of tech education and requires living technology and computer science as mandatory Junior and Senior High programs. Additionally, MOE has granted NT$2.1B to support new computer science equipment in schools and has been committed to training over 1,000 teachers in three years. Besides collaborating with PTWA in the National Robotics Competition in the summer and winter of 2019, ACF supports Train the Trainer Workshops, where trainers once coached by Su lead the workshops for trainers to-be. ACF hopes that through the sessions, more partnerships with schools will be formed and more educators will benefit from PTWA's training resources. On the final day of the competition, ACF Chair Yen shares a closing thought that even in a future where jobs are substituted by technology, human communication, collaboration, critical thinking, and creativity will never be replaced. Su hopes that in the future, the youths of Hualien-Taitung will have the coding ability to find jobs while remaining in their hometowns and that, in doing so, they will be able to help change the futures of their communities.

Educators Taking the Lead Teacher Kuihan Lu, Hualien Taiping Elementary School Coding education in Hualien is relatively advanced compared with Taitung. It is because of the efforts of Teacher Kuihan Lu from Hualien Taiping Elementary School, who, since 2010, recognized the importance of tech education and self-learned coding and Scratch. Since 2016, Lu opened free coding classes every Tuesday for teachers and students at the Yuli Elementary School. Lu also leads Train the Trainer workshops in Hualien, which take place in the north, mid, and south of the county. Lu believes that doing so encourages more participants and teachers in each area to co-learn and support one another even after the workshop. Hengjie Hsu, Kids' Bookhouse Although Teacher Hengjie Hsu did not have a background in Computer Science, he took up the responsibility to learn and teach coding to youths at the Kids' Bookhouse, an afterschool center for underprivileged youths. Every weekend, he works with youths to practice and discuss coding. He encourages youths to design their codes with little guidance. The Kids' Bookhouse team won third in the National Robotics Competition. It demonstrates that even with little resources the afterschool center can offer, they can still achieve high. Hsu is one of Alvin Su's trainees from the Train the Trainer Program.