Paper Cup machines, Edison robots and digital technologies

It has been a busy week developing a range of ideas for the MOVING module class. We have moved away from scratch and the development of algorithms that are being laser cut this week, through to more hands on activities where students have opportunities to be curious and creative.

It started with coffee cups, with other stuff added in. Students created their own paper cup machine that they used to see if they could develop some interesting patterns. One thing that they talked about was all the testing that they did flattened the coin batteries that we were using.

Classroom Post

A pretty great lesson where large amounts of learning, laughter and fun of machines doing some pretty weird things.

This lead to students being able to compare their paper cup machines to robots today.

The kit, Edison Robots and LEGO

Year 13 working along side Year 9 and 10 exploring the edison robot and potential uses

Classroom post

The edison robots provided a good platform for students to learn how to develop and test ideas as part of the Computational Thinking Progress Outcome today. Having an opportunity to work in pairs to design a way for the pen to be held on the robot through to programming and testing the ideas out. Students were required to develop three patterns with their time today. This gave them the opportunity to try out different ideas. We used the the EdWare programming where just in time learning supported students to develop code, figure out how to upload the code to the edison robot and also trouble shoot fail codes. It is amazing how many of the students had there volume turned to mute.

We are continuing to use these for the next couple of weeks. The reason is that want students to develop cultural patterns using computers.

We have been looking at different ideas for holding the felts, however the hole is too small on this. But it has potential. The comments from students who liked the fact that we were using LEGO to develop the mechanisms to hold the felts. Even students who were not part of the class today and in other areas commented that they could hear the lego being tipped out and wished that they could join in the learning today.