I saw this article in the Washington Post today, and it got me thinking about the days when I was teaching robotics.
In 2002, the director of technology at my school gave me a budget and asked me to set up a program. I did lots of research and reading and then purchased some Lego Mindstorms kits and lots of miscellaneous Lego sets. I purchased a mixture of traditional Lego sets and also the ones that go with the Mindstorms bricks (a brick is the basic robotic unit that you build the robot onto), like the intelligent house kit and the amusement park kit.
I also bought lots of different kinds of bins to organize the materials and spent hours, literally, on the floor of my office that year, organizing and categorizing all those tiny bits.
The most fun was developing the curriculum. My boss and I decided what our goals would be and at what grade levels we thought we could introduce robotics. We eventually settled on an introductory unit in 4th grade, a fun project in 6th grade and a week-long project for “interim week” in Middle School.
For 4th grade, I developed challenge sheets that helped the students move from simple commands to more complicated tasks. The Washington Post article indicated that only the self-appointed geeks in the class tend to do well with the robots, but I disagree. By using the challenge sheets and having the students work in small groups, everyone succeeded.
For the 6th grade we used those challenge sheets and then assigned a project: build a Lego float that will be able to navigate a colored tape line on the floor on the day of the parade. The Robo-Rose Parade was probably the funkiest, strangest project I’ve ever done, and we had a blast. Some of the floats were too top-heavy, and the kids had to rebuild on the fly. Some of the robots simply wouldn’t follow the tape line, and they had to scoot into the lab and re-program during the event.
The 7th and 8th graders made a slew of bizarre projects. One animated a teddy bear and made it dance to music. We used an unstuffed bear from Build-a-Bear, and she built a Lego skeleton and stuffed it into the bear. Another group animated a Harry Potter Lego kit; another group created an elaborate intelligent house that featured a scenario where the people come home from work and as the car drives up the driveway, the lights come on, etc. etc.
I miss those days of playing with Legos. Now, my boss teaches the robotics unit to the 6th graders. They have these huge wooden structures, and the robot is supposed to be a dog that the students train to do certain things in the structure. They still have a blast.
I highly recommend using robotics to teach computer programming. It’s fun, it’s relevant, it’s challenging. I’m sure it’s one of the highlights of my teaching career.
