Week 5 marked the beginning of vacation for the students at Hyde Park Primary School. However, all the students in the robotics class had gotten parental permission to sacrifice their first week of break to continue robotics. Now, they would get to design and build robots of their own.
However, I was still a bit unsure about how to guide them into Phase 2. In particular, we needed to come up with some tasks for each team's robot to do. We needed "cool" problems that they could solve with their robots. Furthermore, the problems could not be so technically challenging that the students would need to learn much more - unfortunately, we did not have enough time for that. All that to say, I was struggling to decide on problems that would be good for them.
Thus, on Monday I gave the students more time to experiment and see what ideas they had. As they worked I continued showing them videos on YouTube of other robotics projects to spark their creativity. We also found out the school caretaker and secretary were staying past noon, and so decided to stay back as well. That worked out well because several of the students were absent and the rest had arrived late for the most part.
That night, I continued thinking and eventually settled on some challenges. Team Green would make a robot that shot a ball into a box, an idea they had been experimenting with. Team Blue would build a robot that loaded new balls into Team Green's robot. Team Red had been experimenting around a bit with arms and so I thought they might make a robot that found and pulled boxes out of a playing field. Finally, it seemed that Team Yellow could make a robot that drew a message by lowering and raising a pen as it drove around a sheet of paper.
With these tasks to focus our work, we proceeded on Tuesday. To save time I provided them with some ideas about how to start or modify their current start.
As it got close to noon, we bought the students a Gatsby for lunch.
After they finished eating, we continued and made good progress. This photo even shows the loading mechanism (the block in the middle) coming together.
Furthermore, Team Green finished and demonstrated the initial functionality of their robot: lining up to a target box using an ultrasonic rangefinder to aim and then throwing a ball in. It was great to see their individual task starting to come together!
We continued in the same fashion on Wednesday, making further progress on the robots. Team Red even got to demonstrate the initial functionality of their robot: finding a box and then backing up to a black line (simulated here by a black sheet of paper) and turning to place the box over the line.
Along the way, we also ran into some topics that the students had not understood completely and were able to address them in the context of the new robots they were building. I believe this was a quite helpful and important aspect of Phase 2.
Thursday was the day we finished the individual tasks. As I recall, it was also the day Team Blue and I decided to change their task. It did not seem like we had enough time to make their robot able to reliably load a new ball into Team Green's robot. Thus, their new task was decided to be a maze solving problem based on line following. Their robot would use a color sensor to follow a colored path out of the maze. Here is their initial demonstration!
It was exciting to have the students nearly finished with their individual tasks. Next up, we needed a group dance for the robots to perform at the exhibition. After a quick pizza break, we began working on the dance, choosing the song and choreographing. This continued into Friday, and at the end of the week we were nearly done! The students who had come had truly worked quite hard that week. However, we still had a lot of work ahead of us and would need those couple days of school before the exhibition.
Thursday also contained a surprise for the students - folks from Projects Abroad stopped by to see how things were going, as well as document the work and interview the students. It was exciting to have a real photographer and videographer in the classroom with us! I'm excited to get their material once they get a chance to finish all the necessary processing. :D
One issue that arose was attendance. From Team Red, Lance did not come during the course of the week. Ashlene had to do all of Team Red's work, but I was very happy to see how well she stepped up to the challenge and I believe she learned a lot through the work. From Team Yellow, Larson also did not come and Zaakir only came one day. This meant they did not really have a robot to present. We would need to sort all these things out when we got back to school.
Nevertheless, it was a tiring, but successful week. I was proud to see how the students had progressed and was confident we could finish in time for the show.
However, I was still a bit unsure about how to guide them into Phase 2. In particular, we needed to come up with some tasks for each team's robot to do. We needed "cool" problems that they could solve with their robots. Furthermore, the problems could not be so technically challenging that the students would need to learn much more - unfortunately, we did not have enough time for that. All that to say, I was struggling to decide on problems that would be good for them.
Thus, on Monday I gave the students more time to experiment and see what ideas they had. As they worked I continued showing them videos on YouTube of other robotics projects to spark their creativity. We also found out the school caretaker and secretary were staying past noon, and so decided to stay back as well. That worked out well because several of the students were absent and the rest had arrived late for the most part.
That night, I continued thinking and eventually settled on some challenges. Team Green would make a robot that shot a ball into a box, an idea they had been experimenting with. Team Blue would build a robot that loaded new balls into Team Green's robot. Team Red had been experimenting around a bit with arms and so I thought they might make a robot that found and pulled boxes out of a playing field. Finally, it seemed that Team Yellow could make a robot that drew a message by lowering and raising a pen as it drove around a sheet of paper.
With these tasks to focus our work, we proceeded on Tuesday. To save time I provided them with some ideas about how to start or modify their current start.
As it got close to noon, we bought the students a Gatsby for lunch.
After they finished eating, we continued and made good progress. This photo even shows the loading mechanism (the block in the middle) coming together.
Furthermore, Team Green finished and demonstrated the initial functionality of their robot: lining up to a target box using an ultrasonic rangefinder to aim and then throwing a ball in. It was great to see their individual task starting to come together!
We continued in the same fashion on Wednesday, making further progress on the robots. Team Red even got to demonstrate the initial functionality of their robot: finding a box and then backing up to a black line (simulated here by a black sheet of paper) and turning to place the box over the line.
Along the way, we also ran into some topics that the students had not understood completely and were able to address them in the context of the new robots they were building. I believe this was a quite helpful and important aspect of Phase 2.
Thursday was the day we finished the individual tasks. As I recall, it was also the day Team Blue and I decided to change their task. It did not seem like we had enough time to make their robot able to reliably load a new ball into Team Green's robot. Thus, their new task was decided to be a maze solving problem based on line following. Their robot would use a color sensor to follow a colored path out of the maze. Here is their initial demonstration!
It was exciting to have the students nearly finished with their individual tasks. Next up, we needed a group dance for the robots to perform at the exhibition. After a quick pizza break, we began working on the dance, choosing the song and choreographing. This continued into Friday, and at the end of the week we were nearly done! The students who had come had truly worked quite hard that week. However, we still had a lot of work ahead of us and would need those couple days of school before the exhibition.
Thursday also contained a surprise for the students - folks from Projects Abroad stopped by to see how things were going, as well as document the work and interview the students. It was exciting to have a real photographer and videographer in the classroom with us! I'm excited to get their material once they get a chance to finish all the necessary processing. :D
One issue that arose was attendance. From Team Red, Lance did not come during the course of the week. Ashlene had to do all of Team Red's work, but I was very happy to see how well she stepped up to the challenge and I believe she learned a lot through the work. From Team Yellow, Larson also did not come and Zaakir only came one day. This meant they did not really have a robot to present. We would need to sort all these things out when we got back to school.
Nevertheless, it was a tiring, but successful week. I was proud to see how the students had progressed and was confident we could finish in time for the show.
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