Success!

This past week we had our fifth meeting. The challenge that I had given them the week before was met! Time to start working on the next one.

We had one of the more boisterous boys come back, who had been missing the week before, but he was much more mellow. He was much more on task himself, plus helped get some of the other boys focused when they were not. I don't know what happened exactly, but I'll take it. :)

At the end of last week, each boy had their own computer and were individually working on trying to solve the problem of picking up the pipe and driving it over and dropping it on the other notebook and they got close. This week we started that way, but about half of them just sort of naturally grouped together and were working on the problem together, which was great to see. They had a couple of computers but were mostly just working on the one program that was the closest and trying it repeatedly until they could get it to work consistently. Part of their problem was not having the spots marked on the floor where the robot and the notebooks were sitting, so they would get bumped around and not end up back exactly where they were previously.

The other half of the boys were just kind of over there messing around on the computers. I honestly don't really know what they were doing. I've gotten to where if they are running around too much, I just sit there and wait quietly for them to be ready, as I can't compete with that many of them if they want to be out of control. One of them will see it quickly and tell the others to calm down so we can get back to work. Since we had about half of them focused, I spent time with that half and let the other half do whatever they were doing.

This is really the norming phase moving in. There is still some storming. They will fight and yell and poke each other in the eye as they are 9 and 10 year old boys after all. But those who want to do something are actually trying and accomplishing what they want to do.

I think the next step is to work on loops and sensors. Right now they have to tell the robot to drive a certain distance, but by using a sensor in a loop, you can tell it to start driving and just keep on driving until a certain condition is met by the sensor, such as seeing a certain color or bumping the touch sensor. That way, we could put the notebooks a differing distance apart, and as long as it is going in a straight line between them, as soon as it sees a certain color, it knows it is on the notebook and can drop the piece and back away. Part of that is also navigating around the table. There are lines in certain parts of the table which can be followed to make sure it ends up in the right place. The basic algorithm is that as the robot drives forward, if it sees black it turns slightly one way or if it sees white it turns slightly the other way. By checking the line regularly and only moving a little at a time, it will end up driving pretty smoothly.

Making progress.