I only recently discovered the definition of a robot. I came across it in instructions for an educational robot used in workshopgiven by Tanya Greig. For a device to be a robot there are four things needed:
- Sensors – to gather information about its area
- Power – for energy
- Motors – to give it movement
- Control systems – to give it commands
Send your students off to find robots in their environment — cars, fridges, industry, school — and identify their sensors, power source, motors, and how they are controlled.
Why use robots in education?
Robots provide a myriad of educational benefits due to their versatility. They foster cooperation, and encourage children to take turns, assume different roles within a team and manage themselves. They promote problem solving – how can we get the robot to do this? why didn’t that work? what do we need to do differently? Personally I have always valued robots as a wonderfully kinaesthetic way to introduce children to programming (and as a spin off grammar and syntax generally). In this day and age programming is an essential skill. Don’t you want your students to be able to download an app and have the ability to change it to do what they want?
This quote sums it for me:
“For all their [Microsoft/Apple/government] education initiatives like the $100 laptop, they seem bent on providing information consumption devices, not tools that teach creative thinking and technological mastery. Web access for the poor would be great. But machines that kids out there can understand and program themselves? To those who shape our technical world, the notion remains not just inaccessible, but strangely inconceivable.”
(See Why Johnny can’t code by David Brin published in SALON www.salon. com/2006/09/14/basic_2/)
By focusing on programming and robotics, students get an important 21st century life skill and also explore creativity in a kinaesthetic way. Those budding engineers, architects and designers (which we are desperately short of) can reveal themselves, just as school radio stations are uncovering our future singers, journalists and DJs.
Robots provide a hidden benefit: They can help manage behaviour. It is amazing what a child will do if they know that their turn with the robots depends on it. Robots stimulate immense motivation and interest. Robot activities are easy to differentiate to support multi-level teaching and learning. They are fantastic tools for increasing oral language, putting the importance of grammar into context and for extending vocabulary.
What robots are used in education?
Today robots are relatively cheap and are owned by schools. Some of the cheaper ones are available in every class. Some schools encourage their use across the curriculum; others have robot units. For early years and junior, there are robots like the BeeBot. This robot can remember up to 40 simple directional commands and is programmed by using arrows. Students then move onto a ProBot that supports from using arrows to using a programming language, Logo. This robot also has a pen holder so students begin to use the logo programming language to control degrees rotated and distance travelled to draw shapes or letters.
At this stage students usually want to move on to build their own robots, and there are many options available such as Lego or the Tamis (pictured). You may then see some students move from the hands-on robots to the programming side of things with Scratch, MicroWorlds or Minecraft, whilst others just keep building bigger and better robots. Competitions such as the Robocup are available.
Greerton Village School’s Kids Rewired Programme
Greerton Village School bought a starter pack of BeeBots that included six robots and a variety of mats: an alphabet mat (for letter recognition, phonics and spelling), a race track mat (for numeracy / time), a treasure island mat (for grid references and storytelling), a street mat (for recounts and great for ESOL) and a transparent mat that acts as an overlay so the students could create their own activities for the BeeBot. For example students each make a picture of a scene from The Hungry Caterpillar and then put the pictures under the transparent mat. They can then recount the story by programming the BeeBot to move around the pictures in the correct order.
Students led the introduction of the robots into the school curriculum. A group of year six boys were given the task learning how to use them and creating educational tasks for other classes. They then trained all the teachers and also ran workshops for five other schools at a kid’s conference. Sandy Bornholdt, the ICT facilitator, says of the integration: “The ownership over the learning process and engagement shown by students are just two of the many benefits of using robots to explore concepts within the curriculum. The students are almost magically drawn into learning through the practical / hands-on process of problem solving or trial and error, which in turn encourages them to rework their ideas and persevere to get not just a result, but the best result possible. In finding solutions, students are encouraged to collaborate with each other, to think both logically and creatively as well as use the specific language, symbols and texts within many of the different learning areas.”
Later at the ICT Cluster Group’s Conference “Kids Rewired,” students were encouraged to share their learning. One of the guests reported back, “I could not believe how passionate the students were about what they were doing. I was completely knocked back by the degree of understanding the students had of measurement and geometry (angles) concepts in mathematics.”
The programme was met with such enthusiasm by the children and parents that the school was able to buy more Bots, with some parents offering to sponsor a Bot each.
Programming with the ProBot
One group of students designed, built and painted a route and another group had to programme the Pro-Bot to navigate it, stopping, turning, sensing darkness in a tunnel and putting its lights on and even tooting its horn. This involves using basic Logo programming to select the degree rotation and the distance travelled, as well as an understanding of how to programme the sensors.
Creating with the Tami Robot
The Tami robots include step-by-step instructions to design an array of different robots such as a car, a windmill, a lighting display, a crab, a turtle and a bug. You can also build “avoiders” who sense an approaching object and veer away or do whatever you ask it to do (so can be quickly morphed into a fighting robot!). Once these are mastered, students will be able to use the kits to design and programme their own robots, and the world is their oyster. And it really will be, as your students will not just be consumers of technology, but may discover a passion to become the architects, designers and inventors of the future.
JENNy BarrETT