Playing is Learning When Robots are Involved

Just before the Christmas break, the 5th and 6th graders at Chambers Academy had a first chance opportunity to get their hands on our Lego Mindstorms robots. Their “assignment” was to program a robot to move a small block from one side of a table to another. A simple task for a human or even […]

Just before the Christmas break, the 5th and 6th graders at Chambers Academy had a first chance opportunity to get their hands on our Lego Mindstorms robots. Their “assignment” was to program a robot to move a small block from one side of a table to another. A simple task for a human or even electronics being control by humans, but how do you tell a robot to do that on its own?

Not only did all three teams work well together, but each of them solved the task! One team did it within 45 minutes! But all the teams learned that failing doesn’t mean failure. They just needed to go back to the drawing board to figure out what went wrong and how the design needed to improve.

“I learned that the robot is very literal and that you have to be specific because it’s going to do exactly what you tell it to do” one 6th grade girl commented at the end. They were all able to get a taste of what it would be like to work a job that involves programming computers and other machinery.  Their experience working in a group on one specific part of the task not only allowed them to work with a team, but they also got the chance to understand the struggles of having to communicate with the next line (i.e., the programmers) in the process.

We are thankful to 4-H for providing these for us and are already looking at more opportunities to utilize the robots with other grade levels.