K-12 EDUCATION

R.O.V. Kit Build-Guide: How to Build a Simple Remotely Operated Vehicle for Classroom Use

Are you an educator looking to motivate your students with a different and exciting engineering challenge? If so, check out PWSSC’s new R.O.V. Kit Build-Guide.

Since 2009, PWSSC has helped hundreds of students design, build, and test Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) in a mock oil spill challenge. Our educators have delighted in bringing the ROV challenge to communities far and wide, reaching diverse groups of students across Alaska. We love to cheer on students through the engineering excitement and ocean obstacles of this challenge; we honor the importance of teaching about oil spill response, recovery, and prevention. But in 2020, due to COVID-19, we couldn’t bring the challenge to even our own Cordovan students. We decided, then, that it was time to finish the instruction booklet that’s been in the works for years.

The R.O.V Kit Build-Guide is the next best thing to having PWSSC’s education team there with you. Over one hundred pages of fully illustrated, science education goodness, the Guide will put PWSSC’s ROV kits directly into your hands. Readers will learn, step by step, how to assemble a simple, customizable underwater robot kit and how to use it in a mock oil spill challenge. Even better, students will now be able to take part in the construction and wiring of the kits themselves. The Guide will be ideal for teaching your students about oil spills, engineering, problem solving, remote operation, and construction. We can’t wait to see where it takes you!

PWSSC’s R.O.V. Kit Build Guide: How to Build a Simple Remotely Operated Vehicle Kit for Classroom Use is available for download, for free, to anyone who would benefit from it. Limited physical copies will soon be available upon request. Please contact Lauren Bien (lbien@pwssc.org) with any questions. Our ROV programs have been generously supported by the Prince William Sound Oil Spill Recovery Institute and the Prince William Sound Regional Citizen's Advisory Council.