By Tatyana Dvorkin, Upper Division Educational Technology Integrator, and Peter Fletcher, Lower Division Academic Technology Integrator
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“Is it a robot or a machine?”
This question encourages an animated and thoughtful conversation with our fourth-grade students in robotics class as images of a washing machine, an iPhone, and a Roomba are projected onto the screen. Does a robot need to be able to move? Does a robot need to think for itself? Does a robot only need inputs and outputs? A washing machine has both inputs and outputs, so does that mean it is a robot?
With the arrival of brand-new LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robots this year, the Technology team has been improving and innovating the robotics program. The new robots combine the colorful LEGO building blocks the boys are already familiar with and a drag-and-drop, block-based coding language. With easy entry-level projects for beginners and a high ceiling for those who want to do more, these are a great way to get boys ready for the engineering and design curriculum they will experience in the Upper Division next year.
Before the fourth graders begin to work with the robots themselves, they learn how robots are helping innovate everyday life, from Amazon distribution centers to hospitals to disaster relief rescue missions. The idea is to connect what we are doing in class to real-world applications and understand how the classroom robots are small but realistic representations of what robots are capable of in the real world. How can ultrasonic sensors prevent collisions both in our classroom and on the road with self-driving cars? How can motor control get our SPIKE Prime robots to travel along a grid in the library just as a robot can travel along one on a construction site checking for gas leaks?
A great deal of time has also been spent building the boys’ coding skills. Beginning in Kindergarten, students use game-based apps like Kodable to learn basic programming concepts, including sequences, loops, and conditionals. They also try their hand at simple robotics with Beebots. As they move into First Grade and on, they begin to work with ScratchJr and later Scratch for coding. Scratch uses block-based code to dive deeper into programming and has more design and creative components.
While recognizing the importance of robotics and coding for the boys’ futures, we also know that robotics class offers so much more than just hard skills. For starters, the boys are learning organization skills as they put their pieces in order and establish what they’ll need to access and when. Then there’s problem-solving, persistence, and patience to work out glitches and bugs if something doesn’t fit or perform its function.
The boys learn responsibility for their tools. We explain that they can’t lose pieces and ask them to check that all pieces are back in the container because if they don’t have all the components, they won’t be able to complete their robots. They also have to remember to plug in and charge their robot. Finally, they get exposed to the basics of the iterative design process, a tool they will use more and more in STEAM related courses in the Upper Division.
An equally important skill they are learning is how to work with others. We group the boys into teams of two or three, which means they have to agree on the design of and code for their robots and use their knowledge and skills to collaborate and negotiate with their partner.
Click here to read more about the learning that takes place in the Fourth Grade.
