We recently received an order of Blue Bot robots and have been having a great time learning to program them and complete Blue Bot challenges. These robots can be programmed to follow a set of directions using either buttons on the robot itself or using an iPad app and then transferring the code wirelessly to the robot. The directions students can program for the robot are forward, back, left, right, pause, go.
When the robots arrived I set students some simple challenges to get familiar with their operation. We tried some tasks such as ‘Can you make the Blue Bot travel around the perimeter of two maths books?’ and ‘Can you make the Blue Bot travel across the square on our classroom mat and stop exactly on the opposite side?’. Once students had conquered these tasks they began to design their own Blue Bot problems for other students to try and solve. Students progressed onto making complex maps using 15cm x 15cm grids and developing stories based on features in these maps for other children to follow. From these initial lessons I can see a lot of potential for improving student’s understanding of directional language as well as improving problem solving skills that can be applied to all learning areas.
Some great ideas here for student driven learning – lots of problem solving opportunities and collaboration! We have also just got some Blue Bots and will be trying them next week. You had some great ideas, we might borrow a few! We are at Thorrington School in Christchurch, New Zealand