My Friday morning robotics class are now in Year 8. I had them in the third Technology rotation last year when they were in Year 7, so I know they are super keen robot coders.
This year, I want them to be able to debug their own problems a lot more so the first step today was to understand how the mBots were put together. The most common physical problems come from loose nuts and bolts on the motors, loose wheels or the connections in the wrong places.
Each student had an mBot and a screw driver tool and we set to taking them apart. I explained how each part was carefully removed and they worked until the robot body was empty and all the pieces were separated on the table. The challenge was to then put it all back together and test it with a simple algorithm to check it can move froward, turn left, move backwards and turn right.
They were surprised when I refused to help them or give any tips on putting the mBot pieces back together and they weren't allowed to sneak a peak at the assembled on at the front of the room. They were allowed to help each other though and there was a lot of that happening.
There was a LOT of quiet concentration. That only broke really in the second half of the lesson when frustrated noises were starting as the nuts holding the motors in place are really small and fiddly.
Then they had to load up the coding for the test run and make sure they had put it together correctly.
It was a very successful exercise today and I have high hopes of them now being able to fix their own physical problems with the mBots this year as we work through our coding tasks. There was only 4 mBots at the end that were not quite put together again (job for me!)
No comments:
Post a Comment