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7th graders begin robotics

Well, today we launched robotics in the 7th grade. Since the "new" schedule has not gone into effect yet, I saw only 2 of Christine's 3 classes (701 and 702). I thought the response was terrific. I did a demo consisting of having a robot travel on top of a set of (black) desks until it found a strip of white paper. At that point it reversed directions until the robot "saw" something (a hand, pencil, my face, etc.) directly in front of it, then it repeated the process ad infinitum.
Not only did this spark some wonderful conversation about what caused this behavior (was the robot looking for more light or less light?) but (without any prompting) lots of "what if" questions arose. "What if the lights were turned off?" "What if the paper was blue instead of white?" "What if we used white chalk on colored paper?"
Of course, once the questions were asked there were stabs at expected outcomes... So, we suddenly had a room full of 7th grade scientists posing problems and coming up with hypotheses.
This is going to be fun!

FLL tournament

Well, the tournament is now behind us. The TYWLS team competed on Saturday, Jan. 27th. (To learn more about the event click here.)
Clearly, it was a major effort by all concerned. Kudos to all team members and especially to the team's coach, Miss Melissa (she's already looking forward to next year), and those team members who demonstrated what dedication and commitment are all about. In fact, the team kept up their efforts during the day of the tournament and raised their score from 60 on an early round to 158 on the final round!

More pictures of the event can be seen here.

FLL team with 2 weeks to go

At this point the team is actually working in 2 sub-teams. One is working on the robotics challenge, while the other is working on the research presentation.
Here's the robotics group at work. They're busy working on one task at a time, building parts on to their bot, programming the bot's behavior, and then redoing and redoing their work until they're successful. Then what? Off to the next task!






And here's what the researchers look like as they work to complete their presentation.

8th graders have begun

So, today was the day when all 3 of Miss Melissa's 8th grade classes got to work on robotics during Science class. The first task each group/table had was to build the basic model, following the instructions in the booklet which is found in each set. Miss Melissa set up an assembly line operation within each group. This ensured that everyone had a role. Each student was assigned a number and had the responsibility of assembling the pieces in one step of the instructions, then the emerging model was passed on to the person with the next number.
A few observations:
• instructions are all visual...no words. Several groups had some difficulty with spatial relations, i.e., attached pieces on the "wrong" side. This resulted in having to redo some steps.
• some groups worked with each other during the assembly process (so nice to see the collaborative spirit), while others allowed each person to work independently. My expectation is that most groups will realize the importance of working together, since what each member does affects the entire group.

To be continued...

Bronx FLL

Yesterday, the Bronx FLL competition was held at Truman H.S. Above you see members of the team from TYWLS along with their teacher/coach, Miss Melissa.
More pictures of the day's events can be seen at Bronx FLL.
Next, of course, is the citywide competition to be held at Riverside State Park during the last weekend in January.

Nov. 2nd FLL team meeting

Yesterday I visited with the team for the first time. Very impressed. The girls used the user manual that comes with the NXT kit and assembled a bot.
They also attached various sensors to their bot and used the built in programming environment to program it to react to the environment in the classroom.
We talked about why the sound sensor wouldn't be appropriate for the competition...then we saw why this was so. The sensor is extremely sensitive and so it picks up sounds even at a distance.
We're still waiting for the mission materials to arrive so that the team can assemble the mission models and place them on the field mat. Next week's work!