Meeting #2: Moving Basics

We were doing some research about how to best teach new students the basics of programming and moving the robot.  In our reading we discovered that the EV3 software comes with tutorials for the students to complete.  Those tutorials teach a majority of the basic moves and most students just skip that part of the instruction.

Not the STEManiacs!

Open EV3 software and go to Robot Educator --> Basics --> Tank Move

The students can work in group of 3-5 to practice their self-learning; reading through the slides, copying the given code, and seeing the results.  Just the practice of following directions, checking their work is valuable.

After each iteration of programming the group moved the robot to the mat to test.

Each group had 5 roles; programmer, assistant programmer, robot wrangler, recorder, supplies.  We gave each child a clothespin with their role on it.  After each visit to the mat they rotated clothespins to ensure each team member was doing each job.

It was interesting to watch the kids participate in the self-learning process.  By really limiting their roles and ensuring that each child participated it kept students from blending into the background and it kept other students from overtaking the mission.

 Once the students achieved the tank move tutorial they moved on to the move object tutorial.  There are a total of 9 tutorials and the kids only completed two of them.  Its a really easy pre-challenge activity for the kids to take part in.

SUCCESS!!!