Last Thursday we had our 10th Robotic Dudes meeting. It started a bit slow with people running around again, and we had another discussion regarding the need to focus. I think it may be starting to sink in that they're not going to be able to continue coming if they aren't actually working on something.
We are supposed to be getting another helper, a USU student with some programming background, who will be coming to help with crowd control and answering questions. At this point, we really need to get going on programming. Of course, that wasn't helped much when we showed up and all the computers that are normally in the STEM Lab were gone. So we talked about pseudocode, which is a way of stepping through the logic of a program without actually writing code.
I had the boys grab their notebooks and write out how they could logically work on certain tasks. I think it was good, but they needed to be a bit more detailed in their pseudocode. They would write things like drive forward and lift the lever, instead of how it would know how far it had gone or what type of motor would be activated to lift the lever.
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Nine Lives
Our Robotic Dudes last week was fairly uneventful from a productivity standpoint. It was our ninth meeting, and honestly I don't that we got much done. The challenge kit and table are fully assembled and in the room where we can actually work on them, since they wrapped that up in preparation for STEM Night. We started by talking about how STEM Night went and what goals people had for moving forward. We also talked through a few of the challenge options and broke into some teams based on which challenges people wanted to work on. But about half the group just ran around out of control, not paying attention to what we were doing. Does that mean we're in the Storming phase of team development or have we regressed to Forming? The ideal is that moving forward we'll have some additional adult supervision to help out.
Thursday, January 18, 2018
STEM Night
Last Thursday was meeting 8 of the Robotic Dudes. We were preparing for the STEM night, which was last Friday. We didn't have to do a presentation, just take turns with the other Lego teams from the school manning a booth with the challenge table and a couple robots. We were to just be there working on things and talk to people as they came up to us.
In our meeting on Thursday, it was a pretty low key work day. We were broken up into a couple different groups. As usual, some were working harder on things than others. One of the boys was singing Weird Al's The Saga Begins, a spoof of American Pie about Star Wars Episode I. It is one of my favorite songs (both Don's and Al's versions), so I put it on the room's speakers. Then I somehow turned into a DJ, taking requests for songs they wanted to hear. I was hoping the background music would help them focus some, but it actually distracted a little bit. It wasn't too bad, as I turned it down so it wasn't too loud. I was kind of surprised that Lukas Graham's Once I Was Seven Years Old was the most requested song. I don't think they were going to let me out of there without playing it. I mean, it's a good song and all. I guess they like channeling their inner seven year olds.
The actual STEM Night was pretty good. There were a lot of people there, throughout the school. The star gazing was a big hit, with a portable, inflatable planetarium. I didn't make it inside as there were a lot of kids lined up to go in there. There was a 3D printing station, some dogs from the humane society, and paper airplane contest. They had pizza and lots of science exhibits from the university and other groups around town, so a good atmosphere.
As for our particular station, I think it was okay. The other teams did the first shifts. Those teams seemed pretty well behaved and able to talk to people about what they were doing. We were at the end. I thought the crowds would have thinned out more by then, but people seemed to be sticking around. We had to clean everything up, which wasn't too bad. Several of the challenge pieces were broken, or maybe better said slightly disassembled, from everyone wanting to touch them. Some of that is from random kids and adults looking at things and some of it was from our team not being able to keep their hands off. I was a little surprised at how excited some of the team was, like they had never seen the challenge kit before, grabbing pieces they wanted to play with and yelling like they were at a birthday party. I mean, it was loud in there already, with as many people as were crammed into the cafetorium (combined cafeteria and auditorium), but I guess it's good that they're still excited to be there.
In our meeting on Thursday, it was a pretty low key work day. We were broken up into a couple different groups. As usual, some were working harder on things than others. One of the boys was singing Weird Al's The Saga Begins, a spoof of American Pie about Star Wars Episode I. It is one of my favorite songs (both Don's and Al's versions), so I put it on the room's speakers. Then I somehow turned into a DJ, taking requests for songs they wanted to hear. I was hoping the background music would help them focus some, but it actually distracted a little bit. It wasn't too bad, as I turned it down so it wasn't too loud. I was kind of surprised that Lukas Graham's Once I Was Seven Years Old was the most requested song. I don't think they were going to let me out of there without playing it. I mean, it's a good song and all. I guess they like channeling their inner seven year olds.
The actual STEM Night was pretty good. There were a lot of people there, throughout the school. The star gazing was a big hit, with a portable, inflatable planetarium. I didn't make it inside as there were a lot of kids lined up to go in there. There was a 3D printing station, some dogs from the humane society, and paper airplane contest. They had pizza and lots of science exhibits from the university and other groups around town, so a good atmosphere.
As for our particular station, I think it was okay. The other teams did the first shifts. Those teams seemed pretty well behaved and able to talk to people about what they were doing. We were at the end. I thought the crowds would have thinned out more by then, but people seemed to be sticking around. We had to clean everything up, which wasn't too bad. Several of the challenge pieces were broken, or maybe better said slightly disassembled, from everyone wanting to touch them. Some of that is from random kids and adults looking at things and some of it was from our team not being able to keep their hands off. I was a little surprised at how excited some of the team was, like they had never seen the challenge kit before, grabbing pieces they wanted to play with and yelling like they were at a birthday party. I mean, it was loud in there already, with as many people as were crammed into the cafetorium (combined cafeteria and auditorium), but I guess it's good that they're still excited to be there.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Ringing in the New Year with Robots
Last Thursday we had our seventh meeting of the Robotic Dudes. A few days before our meeting, one of the other coaches contacted me about sharing robots, which I think will be a great thing. At this point, we've all built the basic model straight out of the book. The idea was that if we've all got stock model builds sitting there in the closet, we might as well share them so we can have several groups working on their own hardware at the same time in the class.
Based on the kindergarten feedback, I had one group working on adjusting the robot's arm so it would be two separate arms that would alternate up and down instead of one larger arm with both sides going up and down together. I gave them a little hint which gear they might use to make it work, and they did the rest. They put some little "hands" on the ends of the two arms, and it worked great. At that point, their unfocused creativity took over, and they spent the rest of the time building a big tail and putting ears on it so it looked like a dog or something. As soon as they left, I took off the tail, but I did leave the ears on it. Mostly, I didn't want the other team when they borrow our robot to have this big thing hanging off the back of it.
Honestly, I think that in addition to having a robotics club, they should just have a Legos club, since that seems to be what a few of them are most interested in - just building stuff with Legos. I've explained a few times that they need to learn to program and have some idea of what they want their robot to do before it makes sense to build something. Maybe I need to completely disassemble our existing robot and have them rebuild it just to get some of that out of their system.
I think today I'll have one group focus on the dancing robot for the kindergarteners, and another group will focus on accomplishing one of the tasks from the Hydro Dynamics Challenge. I think they'll be excited if we do the toilet flushing one.
Tomorrow is the school STEM night, where several groups from the university will come over and do all kinds of fun STEM-related activities (plus pizza) to get kids excited about science. There will be a robotics club booth, where each team will take turns for about half hour apiece, just being there working on their robots. We don't present anything, just be there doing something and available for people to ask questions about what we're doing. Should be fun.
Based on the kindergarten feedback, I had one group working on adjusting the robot's arm so it would be two separate arms that would alternate up and down instead of one larger arm with both sides going up and down together. I gave them a little hint which gear they might use to make it work, and they did the rest. They put some little "hands" on the ends of the two arms, and it worked great. At that point, their unfocused creativity took over, and they spent the rest of the time building a big tail and putting ears on it so it looked like a dog or something. As soon as they left, I took off the tail, but I did leave the ears on it. Mostly, I didn't want the other team when they borrow our robot to have this big thing hanging off the back of it.
Honestly, I think that in addition to having a robotics club, they should just have a Legos club, since that seems to be what a few of them are most interested in - just building stuff with Legos. I've explained a few times that they need to learn to program and have some idea of what they want their robot to do before it makes sense to build something. Maybe I need to completely disassemble our existing robot and have them rebuild it just to get some of that out of their system.
I think today I'll have one group focus on the dancing robot for the kindergarteners, and another group will focus on accomplishing one of the tasks from the Hydro Dynamics Challenge. I think they'll be excited if we do the toilet flushing one.
Tomorrow is the school STEM night, where several groups from the university will come over and do all kinds of fun STEM-related activities (plus pizza) to get kids excited about science. There will be a robotics club booth, where each team will take turns for about half hour apiece, just being there working on their robots. We don't present anything, just be there doing something and available for people to ask questions about what we're doing. Should be fun.
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