Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Good morning, Fort McMurry, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned into the Mac city morning show. I'm your host, Elliot Pierre. And we're going to start the show off the same way we start every episode with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time. So the fact that you're spending with us really does mean the world to me on that note, Tanner hit him with the intro.
Speaker 1 00:00:22 Oh, she caught me near listen to the next every morning show.
Speaker 0 00:00:32 All right, we got a good one today. Me and this gentleman have spent some time together. We actually took a course together one weekend, uh, over two weeks, I think. But, uh, so I'm excited to chat with him about a whole bunch of things today. That being said, as everybody's aware, I do not introduce my guests. I let them do that themselves. So on that note, sir, can you please tell everybody who you are?
Speaker 2 00:00:53 My name is Tom McIsaac. I'm currently a teacher at father Merck high school. I teach, uh, engineering and robotics and that's pretty much me. I'm a retired, it's my retirement job. I spent 20 years in the military. So I'm teaching is my retirement job. It's kind of a passion for me right now. So
Speaker 0 00:01:10 That's awesome. Yeah, that was the one thing when we first met that kind of took me aback is, yeah. This is your retirement gig. Yeah, pretty much. I don't think many people would become teachers as retirement. So when you were in the service, what, what were you doing?
Speaker 2 00:01:28 So my first 10 years I was, uh, I was in the army and, uh, I achieved the rank of Sergeant and realized, uh, as a Sergeant at the time that, uh, I want to do a little more and I applied for officer commissioning was accepted and I enrolled in Royal military college. I spent three years in Quebec in military college and then two years following RMC in Kingston, Ontario. Okay. Upon graduation, I became a Naval officer and I spent 10 years as a Naval officer, and then I left the service. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:01:59 Now I know nothing about, um, the services whatsoever. So were you in Canada for the whole time or were you deployed
Speaker 2 00:02:06 How well in the army? I, uh, I did do a fair bit of, uh, work overseas in, uh, Northern Europe, Norway in particular. Um, it was a cold war. It was the early eighties, uh, a lot of work up in the Arctic gain Arctic. Um, then I got sent to, uh, teach in combat school in Petawawa Ontario and spent a couple of years teaching there. And then, and I just had a, I had two children and I did some reflecting on my life and looking forward to seeing where it, I want it were wanting to go on. We want it to be right. So on a phone, a recommendation by my commanding officer, I applied for a commissioning to become an, an officer. And that's kinda how I segwayed into going to military college and becoming an officer Naval washer. Yeah. Okay. So
Speaker 0 00:02:54 You're doing that education now. You've hit retirement age, which is extremely young. Um, did you have to go back to school to get your
Speaker 2 00:03:02 Education degree or was that, so what happened just to back up a bit here? I, uh, I really had no intentions of leaving the military. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in my 20th year. So that kind of prevented me from continuing to be a Naval officer. Right. So the military assisted me in that transition from military to civilian life. And I'd already had a degree from military college, so I had to get a education degree. Yeah. So as part of my transition to civilian life, they did assist me in, uh, achieving the degree. So I went to KT university, got my education degree. And, uh, once I finished my degree, I officially left the military. I started my life as a teacher.
Speaker 0 00:03:40 Now, did you start off as a teacher here in Fort Mac or?
Speaker 2 00:03:43 Oh, not at all. Actually. I, uh, I had the opportunity to decide where I wanted to retire, so I chose to retire in Newfoundland. So where am I where I'm from. Right. And so they paid for that move. So we moved to Newfoundland and I taught my first nine years actually a Newfoundland. Oh wow. In Stevenville. And then in Cornerbrook and my wife, uh, worked in Cornerbrook with me. So what happened was she had got a job in Halifax. So I moved to Halifax with her when, back to university, again, to get a master's degree. And then once I'd finished the master's to program, I couldn't find any work in Nova Scotia. Right. Uh, I mean, Nova Scotia, it's a tough place to get a teaching job. Not the least of it. The fact that there's so many universities offering education degrees. Right. So I, um, went to a job fair and Fort McMurray Catholic was there and offered me a job. Hey, cool. The rest is history. So I've been here. This is my 10th year, actually in Fort Mac.
Speaker 0 00:04:39 Wow. There you go. You've been here for a long time. Yeah. 10 years. I spent a lot of time to east coast. Cornerbrook in particular. I think it's the most beautiful place in the world. Cornerbrook is gorgeous. Big shout out to, uh, the Glen mill in that's where I always stay. When I go to Cornerbrook it's a historical a hotel there. Oh my goodness. I can't tell you how lovely the services, when you go there. The people are beautiful. The rooms are unbelievable. And the scenery in Cornerbrook is just second to none. Yeah. So are you from the corner? Is that like the part of Newfoundland that you're from originally?
Speaker 2 00:05:17 Oh, I, I, I, um, I was born in Puerto Basque, but I grew up in Cadore valley. So that's what I consider home called right valley. Right. And then my parents, my dad moved to Stevenville to work. So we moved to Stevenville and I actually graduated from high school in Stevens, Stevens, villain. That's where my mom is currently in Stevenville.
Speaker 0 00:05:32 Okay, nice. So now you're a teacher here in Fort Mac and you teach one of the coolest courses hands down the robotics.
Speaker 2 00:05:40 I think so. It's pretty awesome. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:42 So for the people at home, explain what that program is all about. Cause like, I think it's a, it's a cool program to get involved with as a child, for sure.
Speaker 2 00:05:50 So we, uh, had fought the work. Uh, we have, uh, engineering robotics program through our science and technology, tall technology center. Uh, I teach high school robotics. I teach robotics to middle school students. What also solidifies kind of our program is our competitive side. So we do have students that come in from grade seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12. And they do participate in our programs in our classes. Uh, we do teach them about robotics. They, it starts out very basic. And then we even branch out into underwater, ROV, AVS, uh, drones, land-based robotics and so on and so on. And it will be do we connect the classroom to the competition side? So we have competitive robotics in many levels. We have all girls teams. We have actually have two all girls teams in intermediate level, but that connection from classroom to competitiveness, the thinking we thought initially was the connection was something that students could relate to because they could take what they've been learning in class right now apply it. Right. And then some of the higher level robotics it's real life situations. I mean, they're programming these robots to do autonomous things that not unlike autonomous vehicles and other autonomous platforms in life today. So it's really, really
Speaker 0 00:07:07 Neat. I think it's one of those programs that is kind of, especially where the world is going nowadays. The most pertinent. Absolutely. Like not to bash any other of the, the, the subjects, but like not all of them translate directly into potentially what you could be doing for a career. Like you learn math and okay. Math is good, but I got a phone that was good calculations for me. You know what I mean? Um, but, and so it's hard to say like definitively by learning mathematics, what your career path is going to be. It's a good, fundamental skill to have everybody needs math. However, you're teaching like coding and you're working with like automa, like you're saying robots that can do their own thing, flying drones, like it is it's real life stuff. We, um, we try to,
Speaker 2 00:07:56 One of these things you have was interest. Um, really you, you assume that everybody wants to do something with robots. What we find though, and we kind of parse it into pieces is in my high school class, my senior class, her students that like to build on love, building their students, that they don't want to build, they want to code. So they code then there's students that want to be designers. So we teach them how to use solid works CAD and they designed, right. They kind of, by the time they get into the senior level, you start going in different directions, still in the same context of robotics. But they're finding niche areas where they are, um, interested in, in some cases much better at coding tends to be a place where most students kinda kind of get it, but really have no interest in pursuing it. We have some senior coders right now, or that are quite gifted, but these students, all they want to do, they want to code, they don't want to build a robot. You want to code the robot. And then you have students that just recently in one just got an, um, a certification for CAD, which is computer-aided. Yeah. He is one of our design team group and he is fantastic. And he loves the design. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, there's, it's a very holistic environment, robotics, so you can teach so many different things. Right? Well,
Speaker 0 00:09:06 That CAD program you're talking about, that's I used to recruit for an engineering company here in town and yeah. We had to hire engineers who could do that. Yeah. So for him to have that skill and be proficient at it at such a young age, that's going to translate big time. Same with coding. Like it's, I think you're, you're not allowed to say it, this episode might be taken down from the internet, but you can't even say like learn to code on Twitter anymore. Like, cause it's like a bad thing, but like, yeah. Like coding is super fundamental in so many future career options. So for the kids to get a taste of that super cool. Cool. Now you and I went to drone. I don't know college
Speaker 2 00:09:48 Course. I don't know what you want to call it. Yeah. We're licensed
Speaker 0 00:09:51 Drone pilots. Um, I never fly my drone shame on you never, ever, ever the paperwork that's required. And the areas that we're limited to fly it in are so small and Fort McMurray. I'm just like, eh, I got it. Cause I thought it would be good for business. But then after going through the course with you and all the other people in the course, I was just like, ah, there's no way I could potentially like turn this into a profitable business based on what I wanted to do. But you guys, from the school standpoint, you're flying drones all the time. You guys have all different types
Speaker 2 00:10:28 Of drones. So we, we kinda, we're not skirting the rules. We realize that there's been new transport, Canada regulations, and now they've kind of divided into pieces. So anything that's called a sub 300 less than 300 grams, which is we'll be flying most. That's our workhorse, our tiny little drones. Right. They have nice cameras. So there'll be 300 grand, less than 300 grand drones. A lot of these strict regulations don't apply to them because they don't go very high and they don't go very far. Right. And what they have, they're just camera drones. And they're fantastic to use for what we've been using before. So yeah, the bigger drones I'm working on, getting our students actually certified, but we still have to do the SFLC special flight operations certificate if we want to do it. Right. But we're keeping it close to home, so to speak and we're using smaller drones. Uh, but the training's not wasted. Some of these students are doing some fantastic work with our little
Speaker 0 00:11:19 Drones. I like, I, the thing is I used to fly it a decent amount when I didn't know the regulations. Sure. As soon as you take the course, well now you become liable. And now all the rules fall into play.
Speaker 2 00:11:30 You can't play. I can't plead the fifth
Speaker 0 00:11:33 And oh my goodness. In Canada to fly a drone, which is good. Hey, I'm not against the regulations behind them. I think they protect a lot of people and it's good to have some form of regulation, but flying a drone in Fort McMurray. It's a tough
Speaker 2 00:11:45 One. So I did, I did invite him because there are, uh, no of two companies here in Fort McMurray that have our drone companies, right. Dave came in and spoke to my students. That's awesome. It gives them perspective. Yeah. Um, some of the professional drone, pilot, not some, all of the professional drone pilots here, um, they're flooding. They were constantly, yeah. So much work for them. So for my students just realized like, I can do this for a, as a career. Yeah, sure.
Speaker 0 00:12:10 You can. And that's the one thing that the regulations have put into play for businesses is you can charge a lot more for that now because it is so difficult to like get through the accreditation and the insurance. And then when you want to do a job, all the paperwork, you can, you can charge a higher rate because it is not easy. Not everybody can do it. Absolutely. But yeah, for my little purposes that I wanted for him, just like, there is money, but I don't want to do any of that. But yeah. That's cool. So we're at a part of the show called the Mac city minutes. This is Tanner's part. He's going to ask you five random questions. I never know what he's going to ask him. He always blows my mind, but uh, Tanner hit him with the Mac city minute
Speaker 3 00:12:51 Question. Number one for you today. What is one thing you'd like to invent a robot to do for you? Cook my food question. Number two. What was one memory from the military you take with you into teaching
Speaker 0 00:13:08 Discipline?
Speaker 3 00:13:09 Question number three. How do you find dealing with people in the military system, in the school system? Similar
Speaker 0 00:13:17 Professionalism,
Speaker 3 00:13:19 Question number four. How do you use your military training and teaching robotics?
Speaker 0 00:13:25 Uh, grit.
Speaker 3 00:13:28 And your final question. What is your favorite memory involving a robot going
Speaker 2 00:13:34 To a world's competition with my students for underwater robotics.
Speaker 3 00:13:38 And those have been your five questions.
Speaker 0 00:13:40 Very cool. Yeah. That was one thing. The last time I was in the school with you, because when I think about robots, I think about like the traditional ones that you have, especially from like, BattleBots, they just like, they pick up balls, they put him, or they have chainsaws or axes and they attack one another. And so, and I came in, checked out some of your guys' robots and all of a sudden you had all these sub submarines, basically that looked like drones, but they went underwater and I'm like that constitutes as a robot to really cool, really cool stuff. So when you're using those, cause the water here in Fort McMurray is pretty dark. Like, are you putting that in like
Speaker 2 00:14:19 The snow and stuff? We tried unsuccessfully, we deployed one from a Zodiac. This is couple of years ago. So we had wondered what we were doing. We were doing some water sampling. So we had a sampling apparatus that we had configured on the ROV. So we deployed it and the visibility was, was something we could deal with, but yeah, occurred and being able to control that small, uh, drone, I guess you'd say it was very hard and it's it's tethered, but essentially, uh, it wasn't powerful enough. It's too actors weren't thrusters powerful enough to be able to fight the current. Right. Once again, the visibility is terrible. It's terrible. It's rough. So we did do some, uh, other deployments. Uh, we tried some of the storm ponds. This is way back when we, uh, we spoke to a local biologist. This is several years ago and I guess Asian carp had actually made their way in some of the storm ponds. Oh, she was doing some testing. And so we offered to deploy one of our LVS into the storm ponds. Maybe just get a visual on somebody he's a Asian carp. So it didn't really happen. We had some difficulty with launching and then a D either clarity of the water. It was terrible and so on. But the idea of it, students are pretty excited. We did do a couple of launches that we didn't see much. Yeah. It's
Speaker 0 00:15:30 Cool. Like, and I follow you guys a Twitter page and I look at the competitions that you go to as well. Like there's one, I don't know the gentleman's name. He's a young man now, but I remember meeting him years ago and he must've just been in junior high. He's has red hair and now he's like an adult basically still like a young adult, but he's still doing the robotics program. And like, he's crushing it every time I follow his like little, well, not little it's big thing in his career in competition-wise like, it's cool to see them grow and then move up in these competitions that they're doing. Yes, absolutely. So with COVID what is, what's the competition? Uh, it's
Speaker 2 00:16:13 I won't say at the bus, but it's not like it has been. So just recently, as a matter of fact, thanks for asking that we had our two, we have two teams that were entered into the skills, Canada, mobile robotics competition. Right. And they finished bronze and silver. So the way it worked was we had two fields set up in our school. So each field was associated to each team and then we set up five cameras and the competition was, um, like a problem solving competition and what it was they had to do to harvest these little dolls, which were supposed to be trees and using the dolls and build a log cabin. Oh, so there's two robots, one harvest the trees, teach them down this little assimilated waterfall and the other robot grabs them and starts building the log cabin four minutes to do that. So, so they did really well. And like I said, uh, bronze and silver.
Speaker 0 00:17:01 And so that's how they're doing it. You set up the course in your school, but then you record it so they can see it because nobody's traveling right now. Oh, interesting.
Speaker 2 00:17:10 This senior robotics one was a little less interactive. Um, they had the opportunity to participate in like a skills competition. They were videotaped a robot. And I think the girls' team decided to do a game design, which was once again a little different. So the senior robotics group were a little disappointed with the options they were given with regards to competing, but it wasn't the same stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:17:32 Oh yeah. Well there's, there is something to be said about competition when you're with the people and see how everything's going down. But yeah. What they're doing, especially with coding, I was, so the word is ignorant. I just didn't know. I figured when I looked at your robots, like it's all remote control. Like what's the big deal, but it's, they're coding it to move in a certain way. And then fast forward years later, all of a sudden Tesla comes on the scene in a big, like, I know it was around when I first met you, but now you can get Teslas that are programmed to like do ballet and drive and do all these cool things. Um, and that is legitimately the fundamentals of what you were teaching. It's so cool, man. So cool.
Speaker 2 00:18:12 So I tell students that a question of what, what the, the reasoning of behind learning all this stuff is. And I said, well, programming that little robot to a grade eight or grade seven to move around this maze and to navigate the walls and to, you know, not bump into the wall and move it around. That's an autonomous vehicle. That's right. It is it's Thomas. I mean, the coding is a little less complex, but you're still using sensors. You're still using, you're giving the robot, uh, in awareness of its environment. And it's, it's the same thing. When you get a grade seven kid that can program navigate amazed. That's pretty impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:47 I'm happy that you're on the show in this. I know we're running out of time, but I saw something and if you haven't checked it out, I just saw it yesterday. Domino's pizza has the first autonomous delivery driver. Wow. I don't know if you've seen this yet. Check it out. I think your kids would find a really cool it's this little car. It's a straight up car. And like you open it and it keeps your pizzas like super warm because that's all it is. It's like an oven on wheels, basically like a warming of it. And, uh, it comes to your house and then you have to walk out and you type in your code and then you can open it, just like a newspaper box. And then you take out your, your pizza and then you close it and you go back in your house.
Speaker 0 00:19:27 So this is completely automated from like, when it leaves Domino's location to when it gets your house, does it all on its own. So I saw this last night. So if you have a chance, go check it out. Domino's is doing some pretty cool things that, uh, I think your kids would resonate with. If you're it's like, how do I translate this into a job? Well, somebody at Domino's is doing exactly what we're doing here right now. So, uh, before I cut you loose. So Tom, uh, please, before you leave shameless plug, once again, who are you? Where are you working? And more importantly, because of what you do, how can kids get involved in your programs?
Speaker 2 00:20:06 So tell them MCI, they go work at father Merck high school. I teach at the science and technology center. I teach engineering and robotics and we do have competitive robotics programs at our school. I starting at grade seven, right up to grade 12. And we, uh, we do encourage students to come and check us out. We meet on Saturdays, not so much now, but we will once this opens up a bit, uh, we meet Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. There we
Speaker 0 00:20:28 Go. Sweet. Thanks man. On that note for McMurry wood, Buffalo in the rest of the world. Thank you so much for tuning in today. This has been the Mac city morning show as per usual. I'm your host, Elliot Pierre. And uh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully you're having a great day and we'll see you tomorrow. Peace.
Speaker 4 00:21:03 Talk about quenching your ugly thirst.
