We are excited to highlight our April Educator of the Month, Paulo Pinto, a dedicated educator at Pompton Lakes High School who brings decades of experience in both engineering and teaching into his classroom.
“I am a mechanical engineer with a Master of Science degree and about 18 years of professional experience. I have been teaching science, Physics and Chemistry, for about 21 years in a high school environment.”
His passion for teaching is rooted in the classroom experience itself.
“I love the daily interactions with teenage students, seeing them grow emotionally and intellectually as they progress through their academic workload.”
Meeting Challenges in STEM Classrooms
At the high school level, engaging students in STEM requires more than introducing new tools.
“At the high school level, our task is to find STEM activities that challenge and motivate our students to always strive to learn the underlying science and technology that support the activities.”
Why LocoRobo
LocoRobo created a direct connection between engineering concepts and programming skills already being taught.
“LocoRobo, specifically LocoArm, came into play as a perfect match between our engineering/robotics curriculum and our computer science classes which cover Python programming language. They learned the importance of integrating the robot mechanics with the logic of the program coding.”
Implementation and Support
Students worked through structured lessons that emphasized both coding and real-world application.
“Students followed the LocoRobo curriculum to learn how to write Python code to program LocoArm to perform repetitive motions as well as to respond to input signals from the LocoArm sensors.”
Support from the LocoRobo team helped extend these learning experiences further.
“On several occasions, LocoRobo support team assisted us in developing Python programs which had conditional variables in the for-loop routines.”
Impact on Students
Students applied what they learned through hands-on projects and independent work.
“Our students created their own projects, such as sorting and stacking objects including input data from the LocoArm sensors, and followed a self-paced schedule to achieve the project objectives.”
They developed a deeper understanding of engineering through this process.
“They learned that good engineering often is the result of, not only creative and critical thinking skills, but also of perseverance and hard work.”
Outcomes That Matter
The impact of the program was clear across both students and staff.
“LocoRobo/LocoArm curriculum has been a wonderful tool for our engineering/computer science students to learn the fundamentals of robotics and Python programming language.”
“Our school district appreciates very much the support that LocoRobo has given to our teaching staff.”
