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Well, I was prepared for lots of excitement today, and it didn't disappoint. I put out as many types of robot as I could, so we ended up with BeeBots, ProBots, Roamer Toos, Attacknids and Spheros. I also put out the robot arm. All were used (took quite amount of time to put in all the batteries beforehand). The Spheros were popular, and I also put out some cylindrical cones so the students could design their own obstacle courses. This is where things became interesting - someone requested tape and put a Sphero into the middle. They ended up with an elliptical sphere that produced unpredictable movement when the Sphero was activated!
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Today we used the DK book about Cardboard Engineering to make and paint carboard owls. The students needed quite a lot of assistance with cutting out the beak, but were great with the paint and not spilling it over the floor!
A new month so a new co-curricular club! Today we had 17 Gr1 & Gr2 students come to the first Makerspace of 2018. After watching a couple of videos about Paper Circuits they they had a choice of using Lego or Polydron or the puzzle game 3 Slices. We had over an hour for each student to work with me assembling their paper circuit. I had already put on the copper tape, so they had to complete the circuit by choosing an LED and battery. Next week they can make their own circuit using the copper tape themselves. It was a nice relaxing atmosphere, and the students were well pleased with their light up cards. Today I let the students loose on Makey Makey. I showed the intro video, then we went through the how-to instructions on the Makey Makey website. The students were thoroughly engaged and stayed on task the whole session, with the most popular tasks being playing online games using either coin input or pencil drawn keyboard. The previous session was spent exploring Littlebits and making example circuit projects. This again was a useful session. These guided activities proved engaging enough to take the students away from Minecraft play! Here is Morgan's Chair Piano using Makey Makey: Low numbers this week due to conflicting events, but as there were only 2 students I thought it would be a great opportunity to practise some soldering. We started with programming the Ozobots, then moved onto the 4-Solder Zoo Kit to make blinky animal badges. The boys loved the final result. It took a lot longer than I thought to complete the project, so I'll allow more time next week when the other students return. I now need to plan out the other projects we'll be attempting at our Makerspace. Just 5 students after school to launch our Makerspace, but I know there'll be others after the Quebec trip. After watching some videos and talking about some of the projects we can do, we ended up playing with various robots and checking out Minecraft Scratch creations online. The students found it hard to focus on an individual project, so I may need to be more directive about our chosen activities.Next week we'll solder some LED animal kits. Simon is also going to bring his Vex kit to show and work on. |
AuthorAfter many years in the Archives
March 2018
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