I’m not going to make light of the situation the world is in, I’ve read and watched more than enough science fiction to know that would be bad. We currently are in the preface of a dystopian novel, or the scroll at the beginning of the film explaining how the world ended up in however bad way it is presented. So I open by saying – wash your hands, don’t touch your face, & stay home.
So my school was initially closed for two weeks we would be away for three because of Spring Break, it seems logical- people need to stay away from each other so the disease won’t spread as quickly as it can. Schools like mine would operate by doing e-learning. What is e-learning? E-learning initially was the kids having paper & pencil lessons to do at home in Humanities & STEM. Humanities means Reading & STEM means Math. Yes, there’s more to it, but in a nutshell thats about it. As a “Special Area” teacher, there was nothing for me to do…yet.
Friday, was a get prepared day. I honestly think no one was prepared for school to be canceled Thursday afternoon. Everything started in earnest on Monday. This was kind of strange, they wanted us to stay home, but everything else was open. Personally, I’m guessing that for many people it was a play day. This attitude carried through to the weekend as more and more restrictions were announced. This was all at the State and local level… the federal government while acknowledging there was a virus, still was hoping it was all a mistake, a hoax perpetrated by the media & the democrats. Some people still believe that.
So Monday comes, and teachers are allowed in the building to pick up things and to help distribute packets and food to the kids. I added a small LEGO poly bag I had a few of to the mix, so the kids could build even if they didn’t have any LEGO at home. After pulling together some things (more on that later) I went to help. I’m not sure how the system worked, I spent my time filling bags with cartons of milk & juice, then taking them from the kitchen to the pick up location at the front of the school. From what I could tell it went something like this: cars line up. Someone finds out what need and writes that on a post it note that is stuck to their window. As the car gets close, another person shouts out how many bags of food and which grade’s packets do they need. The people delivering food run it out to the car, the people with packets either run the packets out or relay the message that they need a packet for a certain grade. Once everything is in the car, they move on to the next car. This went on from 10:00 to after 1:00. No stopping the line never got smaller. I helped for a couple hours and then headed home with a bag of treasure.
What did I take from my room? I decided if I was going to be at home, I needed to use that time wisely by taking things I wanted to learn and bring them home so I can try them out and develop lessons so they can be used. So I have a LEGO WeDo 2.0 kit, and a LEGO Spike Prime kit, both I’ve had for a while, but have been missing some component needed to get it to work. I have my own tech at home that I know works, so no need to wait for someone to get what I need. Next there is a Makey-Makey board. This is a programmable circuit board which allows you to do so many things, it would take two or three posts to just scratch the surface. My thought for this is using it with 4th grade when they study electricity. I also grabbed a Raspberry Pi (because I was hungry). This is basically a stripped down computer. Like the Makey-Makey it is something I heard about by reading almost anything about making in an educational setting. The rest were bits and bobs that I had picked up over time and brought school with the best intentions. I thought I have three weeks, I can get to figure all this out. By the way, while people might think I’m confident using all this, I’m not, I’m actually pretty terrified. While I come across confident and all knowing, I am Oz the great and powerful, pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
I won’t go day by day, but I will go project by project, starting with LEGO WeDo 2.0. I’d taught myself LEGO WeDo when I first took my job.a simple drag and drop block based programming language. Over the years 1st and 2nd graders have built and programmed many things that make them very happy and most importantly confident. This was the next version. The biggest difference is the new version isn’t attached to the computer, so what you build can move around a lot more. Very cool. This week I got everything set up and got one of my tablets to connect to the block. Nothing big, but I did get a light to change color on a LEGO slug. What I have learned so far is that my skills with WeDo are pretty transferable to the latest version. My confidence is high- if the technical issues at school can be addressed.
I decided to dive into Spike Prime. This is the latest from LEGO Education and is geared toward upper elementary and middle school. First thing you notice are the wild colors. Most every element is in what I consider a non-traditional color. Secondly, there are a lot of new elements. I took a look at everything and thought I could go ahead and do all the various projects, or I could try to get something we already do and see if I can reproduce it in Spike. I, of course picked the latter. I started constructing a SumoBot like 6th grade is building. Ugh.
In class 6th grade have been working on Sumobots, which is the culminating activity for them. They must demonstrate the engineering design process as well as program two different sensors. We currently use Mindstorms NXT elements and Mindstorms EV3 software to program. (FYI: an NXT light sensor needs to programmed as an NXT sound sensor comparing decibels in order to work) The lesson begins with the building of a simple robot – LEGO 9797. This is basically the test bed for the sensors. It also gives those who have limited experience building with Technic a good grasp of how you can put things together. Once the basic bot is finished the students start with the light sensor. The idea is to program the sensor to back up when it sees white. The field is black with a white outline. Once that is done we move onto the ultrasonic or distance sensor. If they can get both of these working, it’s time to design a sumobot. Students can either add things to the basic bot, or rebuild something awesome. It is at this time I tend to bring out what ever I have tried to create this year. The students all try to copy it because they weren’t listening when I said “my designs usually look really good, but never win, in fact they lose all the time.”
It is with this background I started to build a sumobot. I started tinkering, moved on to trying to build a 9797 bot even though the motors are completely different. After that I moved to building a box that could hold the motors and the brain. When I got something that could work, I added sensors and moved into programming. At first glance Spike is a cross between WeDo and EV3. While I have very little knowledge with Scratch it looks like it is pretty close to that block based language. I still have a long way to go, but since they have now closed school until May 1st I think I might have some time 😁
Besides starting those two projects, I decided to build LEGO City set 60200. Which has a wide variety of things that belong in a city, which I built a few things each day. Now the fun part… taking what I’ve built and making it even better. That starts Monday.
The only other thing I’ve done is get overwhelmed by all the things people are doing to help during this time. Writers, artists, libraries, museums. It’s amazing how everyone is pulling together. I tend to pass things along on Twitter @professorzoom or @explorobots or on Facebook @explorobots. I guess I should add figuring out how I can better use Instagram, may is a long way away.
On Monday I return to school to help out again and find out if I can do an e-learning unit for the entire school that I asked about. Wait and find out.