We tried out the Juggernaut Challenge this week. Before we could start we had to define juggernaut. No one knew what that word meant! Juggernaut is a large, overpowering, destructive force or object. In order to prepare for this challenge we watched warm up videos including a video in Spanish that showed explicit detail for this particular challenge. This video helped a lot giving a visual for the students to reference while programming together. We built walls with blocks and practiced having our Dash robots be juggernauts! With trial and error, we realized that our walls could not be too massive or our Dash would not plow through. It was fun!
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The creativity displayed with this week's club meeting was outstanding! Before we started the Zoo Party Challenge we worked on the Scroll Quest portion of the Wonder App to try to unlock more cues, states and behaviors we can use in our programming codes. We loved that we could see as each Scroll Quest Challenge was accomplished the Ipad was given to the next team member so all students had a chance to work their Dash and Dot robots. Teamwork, collaboration and sharing is a vital component of Hornung's Robotics Club. They need to be able to work together in order to have fun! After Scroll Quest was worked on for a bit we attempted the Zoo Party Challenge created by the Wonder Workshop Club materials. However, the kids were just not into it. So, we designed a impromptu activity where the club members had to build cages for their Dash and Dot, disguise them as zoo animals and have them dance in their zoo habitats without any blocks falling. The kids loved it! They decorated their robots to look like animals, made cages with blocks and worked together using the Wonder App to make their robots dance. It was quite impressive! We had a lot of fun at our third club meeting. As students enter the classroom for our club meetings, we always start with a reflection and/or warm up as we munch on a yummy snack! This week we reviewed what cues and states are and then learned about the "Obstacle not seen" cue. Again, the youtube videos from Wonder Workshop were very helpful. Before we started the challenge we determined how many cues were needed for the challenge and used a cue code cheat sheet to read what those cues entailed. Then students got into their teams and tried the challenge out. They had three levels of the challenge to accomplish: 1) program Dash to make a boing sound when you press a button on his head, 2) program Dash to greet you when you press two buttons in order and 3) record a secret message as a custom sound. Students displayed determination and persistence as they worked as a team to accomplish these tasks. It wasn't easy, but they did it! A great example is shown in the video below: We have discovered that having a structured activity or challenge for the students to perform is beneficial, however we can see that many students want the chance for some free play time. Ultimately the reason for joining the club was to have fun so when our challenge was complete (or got a little too demanding for some) the club meeting gained a mind of its own. The students decided to organize a game of tag using the Dash robots on a large carpet. They loved it and enjoyed having some time with no directions or tasks to follow. Playing this invented game of tag prompted the club members to experience navigating and steering their machines, which is still a new skill we need to work on!
At our second club meeting we tried our our first challenge using the Wonder App, called Hello World. Using cues and states from the Wonder App we programmed our Dash robots to say, "Hello world!" after we spoke to it. We also programmed him to say, "Hello world!" after he turned around and we spoke. Watching videos about cues, states and deleting cues and states before this club meeting was helpful. Thankfully Wonder Workshop has a number of videos available via youtube to help explain these program features. We took a close look at what the cue symbols looked like on the Wonder App so we could easily identify which cues we needed for this particular challenge and future challenges to come.
A president and vice presidents have been created to help with our Robotics Club at Hornung Elementary. Mrs. G and Mrs. Allen are not experts when it comes to robotic programming and coding. We needed a couple of students who are advanced in this area to help us out! We nominated a few boys for this position and they experienced teaching the other club members how the cues and states work together in order to make Dash and Dot perform tasks that we wish. I was extremely proud of these boys for sharing their knowledge and expertise. The kids learned a lot and I think the club coaches learned even more! |
AuthorMrs. G - elementary tech enthusiast! Third grade teacher at Hornung and super excited to lead this STEM based club at our school! Archives
March 2017
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