Testing out Santa's Sphero sleighs

In library class 5th grade has been working on building Santa Sleighs out of recycled materials. Today they got to test them out with Spheros for reindeer! We learned that running on the carpet causes friction which slows things down, that it's good to have your reindeer closer to the sleigh, that a smaller sleigh is easier to pull but carries less presents, and that it's hard for ONE Santa to drive many sleighs!

Sphero Sleighs

This month 5th grade has been working on a STEM project, building a sleigh for Santa out of recycled materials.  It has to carry Santa and some presents, and it will be pulled by a Sphero reindeer!  The kids are having a great time! You have to consider the strength of your Sphero, the size of your sleigh, and the friction of the carpet. 

2018!

It's a whole new year and I clearly have not done well with maintaining this blog!  I love blogging, but boy, time is always of the essence. For more up-to-the-minute info about what's going on in the library, follow me on Instagram at @dbslibrary.

The start of the year has brought with it new books, new students, new robots, a few snow days, and a huge Scholastic Bookfair order!  This month the students will be learning programing with Lego WeDos and Wonder Workshop's Dash and Dot.  Other students will be learning about how to create movies using the green screen we have.  Our Battle of the Books continues, with five teams competing in Round 3 at the end of this month.  There will be lots of stories, stuffed animals to cuddle, and fun things to learn.

I'll try to update here a little more often because I do love to read blogs and hope others still do to, but I know Instagram and Facebook provide more timely access to information.  Stick around for some library fun!

BB-8 Wrap-up

We got to play with a Sphero BB-8 robot for a month through the Vermont Robot Rodeo program.  The kids were pretty excited!  Ok, I was too!  Each class got a turn to see it and help me program it.  I was hoping to let each kid get a turn to program it individually during the time we had it, but unfortunately that didn't work out. It became difficult to manage one robot/iPad shared across an entire class of overly excited students.  I did try to get it into as many hands as manageable though.  Some students earned time with the robot for good CSR behavior and others were allowed to use BB-8 during their agreed upon break times.  We also used BB-8 and Dash for the enrichment group project.

The 4th and 5th graders, and the 2nd and 3rd graders, were tasked with creating an obstacle course and programming BB-8 to complete the course.  I also asked them to take photos and videos of the process so we could compile them into a final project to present.

The 4/5 group created their course using masking tape, cardboard, felt, Imagination Playground blocks, and Keva planks.  The 2/3 group experimented with masking tape tracks, unifix components, and Imagination Playground blocks and tracks.

We all learned a few valuable lessons!

• The Sphero BB-8 robot is harder to control than any of us expected!
• It's easy to create a cool track, but frustrating each time you have to simplify it for the robot.
• Eight-eleven kids trying to share one robot/iPad is tricky.  I brought in my Dash robot to help alleviate this problem, but the kids still really wanted to make BB-8 run the obstacle course!
• Dash is a lot easier to control and more predictable with it's behaviors.
• Technology troubles are super frustrating!  We had battery issues with Dash, "head" issues with BB-8, connectivity issues with both, and always the risk of low battery.
• Programming is fun!!

The 4th and 5th graders compiled their videos and photos into a final presentation to share:

The 2nd and 3rd graders ran out of time to make their movie, so I pulled their videos and photos together into a presentation:

With a lot of time and missed recesses (their choice), the 4/5 group was able to get BB-8 to mostly complete the track they had designed, with a few track modifications (removed ramps and stage).  The 2/3 group went through several track revisions and ran out of time to finish the track.  They had more difficulty with the programming as well.  Lots to learn for all of us!

I'm planning to keep Dash at school, or maybe buy a school one so my kids can have theirs back!  We also have Lego WeDos available, and EV3s for the more advanced programmers.  Everyone agreed that enrichment group is fun and robots are cool.  :)

Getting creative

Third graders pulled out the Imagination Playground blocks to augment their BB-8 track today.  It was great to hear their ideas develop and see the teamwork!  We have one more week with BB-8 before we have to send him on his way.

Teamwork!

Second and third graders building an obstacle course for BB-8 and Dash.  This is what learning looks like!

Fun with BB-8

Some first graders earned extra time with BB-8 this week!  

Taking apart BB-8

We can't take apart our BB-8, but we can watch someone else do it!  The robot makes a lot more sense when you know how it works inside!

Planning...

Today's 4/5 enrichment group started planning an obstacle course for BB-8.  This looks like a challenge! 

Watching Star Wars with BB-8

When I was introducing BB-8 to the students, several pointed out that they had one at home and a few mentioned that the BB-8 interacts with the movie.  Everybody was intrigued by that idea!  The kids who owned BB-8s at home hadn't tried it or were unable to explain it well, so the other kids all wanted to watch the movie in library and see how the droid interacts.  I vetoed that idea, but I couldn't resist trying it myself over vacation! 

It's cute, and funny to do once, but probably not something I'd do regularly. Also, it requires a constant connection to a cellphone with the app open and running. Serious battery drain for both the droid and the phone, and (I'll confess) it's hard to give up my phone for that long! :)

2nd & 3rd grade enrichment

The Jan/Feb enrichment block was all about robots! The kids learned what robots are, how they work, and then (finally!) got to make their own. Unfortunately we had lots of snow days that got in the way of all academics, including enrichment, so the 4/5 group didn't have time to make a video to share, but 2/3 got to! Here is the video being shown at this mornings assembly.

What can robots do in school?

This week in enrichment we are talking about what kind of jobs robots can do, and what can they do in school?! I challenged the students to come up with a robot (or idea) that could serve a function in school. This task is extra challenging given the time and materials constraints they are working within. The kids jumped right in though and came up with lots of great ideas!

This guy thought his lion could be used in PE class to demonstrate push-ups or supermans.

These two are working on a pencil delivery system. Their robot will roam the room with sharpened pencils, collect dull ones, and (maybe, somehow) sharpen them. These girls were so into their project that they spent all of recess that day telling me about their ideas for how to get the robot up to the pencil sharpener, how to make it hold a pencil, and how to make it use the sharpener. Their brains were hard at work!

I'm not sure what this chompy alligator can do in school, but I know it does an excellent job of amusing students and teachers alike! :)

Lego WeDos

The second and third graders in Enrichment group are working with Lego WeDo kits, which are excellent beginner kits for learning programming and robotics. We have the originals that plug in to the computer, and the newest models that work with Bluetooth and allow for a more mobile robot.

I love their excitement when things work!

BB8 is coming to DBS!

I'm so excited that we will get to play with a BB8 robot next month!

The students at DBS have had exposure to coding through Hour of Code, Code.org, Scratch, and enrichment groups.  Some students have also experimented with the Lego WeDo and Lego Mindstorms kits we have in the library.  I signed up to participate in the Vermont Robot Rodeo this year with the goal of expanding on this coding experience in a fun new way. 

I don't have a fully thought out plan just yet, as I only found out a few days ago that we were getting BB8, but my goal is to let all classes and all students get a turn to program and control the robot.  I may also bring out a prebuilt WeDo robot and a prebuilt Mindstorm robot to add to the mix.  Maybe my kiddos will let me borrow their Ozobots as well.  :) 

By the time we send BB8 on to it's new host in early March, I hope that all students at DBS will have written a program, controlled a robot, and had a little fun.  :)

What is a robot?

In Enrichment group this month we are talking about robots. What is a robot?  What makes something a robot?  (and when get we get our hands on the robots?!?!)  The two groups looked through non-fiction books about robotics and tried to come up with a definition of a robot, then they thought of lots of different things they have experienced or heard of and as a group we sorted them into Yes/Maybe/No categories based on whether or not the group thought it met the qualifications for a robot.

They all agreed that a robot is something that runs on electricity and is programmed by humans (or other robots!)  They all agreed that the robot had to do some sort of job or task, though there was some debate about what that meant.  Does toasting bread count as a task?  Answering questions?  Turning on the power (like a switch or button)??  They also thought, initially, that a robot has to be able to move, but when the discussion got deeper they started to question that assumption.  Does Siri or Amazon's Echo count as a robot?

 

Dictionary.com says a robot is "a machine that resembles a human and does mechanical, routine tasks on command."  Does it have to resemble a human?  The robots in the Tesla factory don't look human.

Google says a robot is "a machine capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically, especially one programmable by a computer." Programmable by a person first?  Or are they considering the "brains" inn a robot to be the computer programming and the physical part, the part that completes the actions, to be the robot?

NASA says a robot is "a machine that is built to do a certain job again and again, or to do work that might be dangerous for humans."  They should know, right?

I challenged the students to think about specific items and decide if it is a robot or not.  They had to think about a toaster, a copy machine, a smart phone, and a Mars rover.  They found it interesting that there isn't exactly a right or wrong answer since there isn't an exact definition of "robot."

What Is A Robot?, an article on wired.com, quotes Andy Rubin, father of Android, as saying, a robot must sense, it must compute, and it must acute.  By that definition a stop light isn't much different from a Roomba vacuum cleaner.  Scott Dadich, the articles author, goes to on to say that as robots because more social perhaps we need to add a fourth criteria: to relate.  He says,"Maybe that’s a fourth step that Rubin didn’t think he had to articulate: sense, compute, actuate … and then relate to us. When that starts to happen, we’re going to want to rethink our definition of robot yet again."

Finally, FINALLY, I let them do what they really wanted to do: make a robot!!!