Holiday Program: Drones, Droids and Robots

STEMiesRobots, Drones and Droids

St Aidan’s last STEMies program (one day in the holidays) incorporated a session ‘playing’ and learning how to code robots, drones and droids. The girls were instructed in using the NXT Mindstorm program to write code to control and manoeuvre their robot. In pairs the girls wrote programs for the robot to complete a set course and along the way to perform ‘robot dances’

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Another challenge was for the girls to write a program using the ‘Tickle’ App to fly the Parrot Mini-Drone from the entrance of the library, keeping the drone at a height of under 2m, to complete a flip and land on the Think Tank table, wait a certain about of time and then take off to perform two flips on its flight to a landing mark on the carpet. The girls discussed, planned, paced, timed and calculated their programs before writing their code. There were many crashes, squeals of delight and many failures! But lots of FUN and a ‘few’ successes!

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There were also many smiles, laughs and skipping around following the drones as a few girls chose to use Free Flight.

BB8 droid is very popular with the girls and the challenge was to again use the ‘Tickle’ App on an iPads to write code to program BB8 to move from the library hand-chair to a mirror, nod three times and make one revolution. Once this was completed BB8 had to enter the dark room using a ramp, investigate inside the dark room and then return to the hand-chair! The girls found BB8 was not always so obliging!

Here are the activity cards I prepared for the girls to use.

Programming BB8 Programming NXT Programming the Parrot Rolling Spider

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Jackie Child
Jackie Child has been teaching primary aged students for 40 years in a number of countries. She is passionate about how children learn through constructivist pedagogy. She is a Teacher Librarian at St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School and a sessional tutor at Griffith University for pre-service teachers. Jackie doesn’t believe in standing still, there is always plenty to ‘do’ and learn!

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