Family Design Challenge Part 2: Self-Driving Cars Using Ozobots!
My students need Ozobots, foam boards, and color coding markers to complete an innovative design challenge with their families.
$733 goal
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Hooray! This project is fully funded
Celebrating Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month
This project is a part of the Hispanic & Latinx Heritage Month celebration because
it supports a Latino teacher or a school where the majority of students are Latino.
Students in my classroom and school are incredibly hardworking, curious, passionate, and thrive on learning through investigation and inquiry. My students are an extension of my family, they inspire me every day to be the best teacher I can be.
I want my students to have inquiry based learning opportunities to explore the world around them not just inside the classroom, but outside the classroom with their families.
STEM activities can help inspire children to explore and investigate their world in their own way. With the adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards, there is a shift to student-centered inquiry, investigation, and problem solving. They need opportunities to plan and carry out investigations and, with the support of their families, explain their findings and design solutions.
My Project
Self-driving cars are turning science-fiction into reality. Here in Silicon Valley, Google is leading the development of these vehicles. Imagine waiting for 6+ years to get your driver's license only to find that you may not actually need it.
In our Family Design Challenge, students and their families design a 3D town and course for an autonomous car, then using Ozobots, test their designs to see if their self-driving car makes it safely though town.
For this project, students will learn about self-driving cars and Google's efforts to design and test these vehicles. As a take home project, students will have the opportunity to work in collaboration with their entire family to design a 3D obstacle course that mimics city streets; they need to get their car safety from start to finish.
Families will use a 12X16 inch base and choose a course for the car to drive. They will then code their Ozobots (self-driving cars) with colored markers, making left and right turns to make it from the start to the finish. As an added challenge, students and families will get creative and create obstacles for their cars like buildings, people, etc using any materials they can find in their homes.
As a finale to our family design challenge, we will host a design showcase where each family can tell use a little bit about their course, their process, and then show us their car in action.
This project incorporates STEM, collaboration, hands-on activities and project based learning. Families need to critically think about their design, make precise mathematical calculations about angles, code their robot, and create and test a design. Additionally, students will then need to explain their findings to others.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Hennessey and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.