Subject:
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Teaching/Coaching Robotics -- Day 1
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics.edu
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Date:
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Tue, 12 Sep 2000 18:43:34 GMT
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Viewed:
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5552 times
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Well! It's been a lot of work from vision to reality, but FLL Team #1096
(Kathryn Hughes Elementary)
had its first meeting last Thursday. I thought I'd share with people here
what I'm doing, in hopes of
getting some exchange of ideas going in this forum.
This is Hughes' first year in the FLL, I got a grant from a local Masonic
lodge with matching funds from
the PTA covering the cost of computers capable of running ROBOLAB and the
FLL registration as well as 4 mindstorms sets.
Since the FLL challenge hasn't been announced yet, I'm taking advantage of
this month to get the kids "up to speed" on building with LEGO Technic and
programming using ROBOLAB. In order to do this, I am borrowing liberally
from a variety of Dacta curricula that I've bought over the last year:
The ROBOLAB starter set curriculum -- particularly the "car" project
The ROBOLAB team challenge curriculum
The Simple Machines curriculum
The FLL Team manual
As well as Fred Martin's "The Art of LEGO Design" and other material from
around the net.
The class consists of 16 4th and 5th graders, from which I expect to draw
the competition team of 10, allowing for kids who cannot make it to
competions, get overcommitted and drop out, etc.
Thursday, we talked about what makes a Robot a Robot, and I introduced the
programming concept by having the kids work in pairs to program each other,
as robots, to navigate the room and to follow a black line using some very
simple
commands (step with left foot, step with right foot, etc.) You can see a
picture of
one student acting as the robot to follow a black line, the program for her
is on the whiteboard in the background, at
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=1334
As the class progresses, I'll keep updating this folder with additional
pictures, etc.
Once everyone had followed the line, I demonstrated a quickie robot I had
built running a variety of programs (some intentionally better than others)
to
follow the same black line. This was a big hit. They were very interested
in the workings behind a program that follows the line very quickly and does
not "hunt" the line at all when it hit corners, etc. (It follows the edge of
the line,
so it always knows whether to turn left or right to get back on the line).
We finished off the 2.25 hour class with each group of students following a
couple of work sheets to get introduced to the RCX controls and downloading
the firmware to the RCX.
Tomorrow, they'll be building their first mechanical platform, the "Car"
project from the Starter curriculum (since I don't
have the starter set, I had to reverse-engineer the drawing on the
worksheets and produced instructions using MLCAD.
(Great Program! Thanks Michael!) This platform will be the basis for a
number of introductory exercises based on the ROBOLAB starter curriculum.
Our goal is to have a little demonstration competion (hopefully the Team
Challenge "Can-do" challenge) at the end of this month, just as the FLL
challenge is announced on Sept. 29. From there we'll be going all-out on
the FLL
challenge.
We're meeting 2 days a week right now, from 2:45 to 5:00.
I'd like to thank a couple of people that helped to inspire this whole
project:
Ben Erwin -- thanks for all the e-mail time last spring, it really
helped to clarify this project in my head
Michael Lachman -- thanks for a GREAT LEGO CAD program!
And, of course, everyone on this forum, I've been watching your ideas and
your websites with particular interest.
I'll have a real website (as opposed to the BrickShelf picture site) up for
the project real soon. Until then, any comments, suggestions, etc. from
people
who have already done all this?
Thanks,
-Peter
FLL Team 1096 coach
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