Remember the fun of creating things when you were young? Whether it was from Tinker Toys, building blocks, or Lego bricks, many of us enjoyed thinking up an idea and watching it form in front of us. Imagine the fun we could have programming a small robot to follow our instructions.
My school is located in East Tennessee, with a beautiful view of the Smoky Mountains from our campus.
We are also close to the McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base and McGhee Tyson Airport. That proximity has been a wonderful motivation to get our school's STEM program up and running. This will be our third year participating in the Hour of Code organized by Code.org and using STEM kits from the Civil Air Patrol, as well as our second year as an A.C.E. (Aerospace Connections in Education), school.
The students have enjoyed building and launching model rockets, attending chemistry and HAM radio demonstrations, and interacting with a robot that can play Connect 4 from one of our local businesses. Last year we received a STEM kit of robotic arms and the fourth graders worked with them to put on a demonstration for the entire school. Now all the students want to practice controlling robots and learn to program them.
My Project
The students will practice the computer programming they have already learned working in Code Studio to write instructions for the Sphero robots to carry out. This will be a combination of the skills they have mastered from working with the robotic arms we received last year, the programming they have learned through Code.org activities, and their knowledge of what robots are capable of doing.
Working with the Sphero app, students will be able to see the robot carry out the programs they put together - combining robotics, coding, and STEM. They can create obstacle courses to maneuver it through, practice drag & drop programming, or access the text-based code for more of a challenge. There are all sorts of activities and lesson ideas online through the Spark community, helping students with everything from critical thinking skills to creating their own apps.
The increase in the number of jobs that require not just basic computer skills, but familiarity with coding and content creation, means that students need to begin working on these skills as early as possible.
The same is true for the number of industries who are converting many of their jobs from manual labor to robotic assembly and who need employees able to work with robotic interfaces and programs. I want my students to have those skills and those chances to succeed in the workplace.
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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 Ms. Costner and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
