Dancing with the Bots
In August 2020 when I was approached about teaching a robotics class online I said, "If you find someone else by all means go with them because I have no clue how to teach robotics online. I'm at home and the kids are at school and I can't interact with them. Robotics to me is so hands on."
The school already had three LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 sets and I got a set to use at home. When the package arrived at my door it felt like Christmas! I opened the box immediately and spent an entire weekend trying to learn what was in the box and how I could use it to build fun educational robots and teach about the physics behind motion and automation.
I expected the main challenge to be showing the students how to build the mechanical parts of the robot over Zoom. I wanted to make sure the gears were aligned properly or the correct pieces were being used to make joints. You don't want to accidentally end up with a fixed joint when what you wanted was a freely rotating one!
I was so wrong. The students welcomed those mechanical problems and saw them as small challenges they could easily overcome on their own. I rarely got questions about the assembly of the robot; most challenges revolved around programming and getting into thinking in terms of algorithms instead of everyday commands.
Another challenge we faced was the varied compatibility of students' devices with the software. We never managed to all use the same software. The variations spanned from "I don't have that option" to "This a totally different programming language." This meant that at times I was sharing two different coding environments on my screen and demonstrating everything twice. It was definitely a strain on my brain but I welcomed the challenge. When I was young and learning to code I never got the opportunity to think about implementing the same algorithm into two different platforms at the same time. I'm confident this type pf parallel thinking will be a skill my students will use in this fast changing world.
Let me introduce to you a couple of robots my students built this year:
Meet Megan: A robot built by an all-female group that uses sensors to avoid obstacles and change course. It can also pick up boxes.
Meet Doug: Doug is the best at avoiding walls and obstacles with its enormous bumper.
We programmed our robots to find their way through an obstacle course. We did not have a lot of equipment to build an arena for our robots. We used everyday objects around the classroom and made the best of what we had. We also put the A in our STEM class. We drew things and made our robots dance to music. We cheered Doug the robot as he danced the Texas two-step to "Blue Clear Sky" by George Strait. (The students and I all live in Texas.)
In the process of building and programming robots, students learned about physical concepts such as force, energy, torque, work and friction. They collected and analyzed data and used the rotational speed of the wheels to predict how far the robot will travel in a straight line. Inspired by simple machines, we applied what we learned about mechanical advantages of levers and gears to the design of complex robots.
We engaged in deep discussions about the ethics of self-driving cars and the human ramifications of jobs being lost to automation.
It's been four months now since I started teaching robotics and today we are building our second generation of robots. Unfortunately, Megan and Doug are no longer with us as their parts are being used to build a robot, which will sort colorful blocks into their corresponding bins. One group has already started working on their code. They have managed to program the color sensor to detect the different colors and say the name of the color out loud. Our goal is to be done by Christmas to help Santa out with sorting the toys.
