Now let the music starts
#Robotics #STEM #Afterschool #Edinburghkids #kids #Cognitivedevelopment
The McRobotface crowdfunding finished with 2 robots, so I am able to move onto the next step. I am very grateful to the funders for their support, shout out to the guy from Japan who I helped 10 years ago in Italy during his travels. I tracked him down using Facebook, easier than it sounds and it was very kind of him to pledge.
The first step is to start understanding and playing with the robots. The age range is from 4 to 13, which is covered by VEX 123 and VEX Go. The sessions will have an introduction with philosophical questions like what is a robot? how does a robot work? Why is a robot? We will find the answers through a journey through educational robots at the club.
Origins of the club.
A 6 year old boy wrote to his headmaster asking for new toys for the class because the construction toys were old and broken. Not much happened. So I wanted to show him a way to take action and make a difference to the educational environment. These educational robots existed for 3 years, as evidenced by the Youtube videos through my research. So in Edinburgh, we are basically more than 3 years behind some random schools in the US which runs robotics competition. So the club will narrow the gap to just 3 years behind. I will look at how to further close the gap. McRobotface Robotic Club will document a journey to understand STEM educational robot development to move from being completely left behind to three years behind in the first step and then subsequently closer to the frontier of research. It turns out my PhD in robotics will help.
Let’s establish the club.
The club currently has two robot platforms. Some clever people already made a lot of research and testing for the VEX 123 and VEX Go, so let’s just play with them as they intend to. There is a finite number of hours for a child to understand what the platform does.
In my educational blog, I believe in more importance in asking questions than answering questions,
VEX 123 – Age 4 onwards (to 7)
This is a simple robot for kids. The robot has lights, sounds, and can move forward, turn left and turn right. I adapted a series of 5 sessions for this age. The robot really fits with Piaget’s model of children cognitive development, like people who designed it had the model in mind. I personally like the screen free coding approach. I look forward to uncovering the endless possibilities that coding a loop can provide.
- Symbolic Thinking: Children can use the coding tiles to connect the symbols to the robot’s movement.
- Egocentric Thought: Children can understand the “3rd person” perspective by coding the robot to interact with the environment.
- Intuitive Thought: Children can develop their intuition to predict and test what will happen to solve a generic problem.
The McRobotface club with VEX 123 has 5 variations of activities to create a journey to introduce robotics to children.
VEX GO Aged 7 onwards to 13
VEX GO is a like LEGO for robots but with fewer variation of parts and set designed plans available like, a car, base robot, robot arm, and linkages. I find it adds an engineering element to robotics. There are broad themes to each sessions, familiarisation (i.e. how does the robot work), problem-solving (do a task), and discovery (how the concept can grow further). There will be a series of 10 activities to cover an academic term for afterschool club activities.
Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 year) is where VEX GO’s design is most aligned with Piaget’s cognitive development model:
- Hands-on Learning; so each session will start with a parts list and build towards a goal, active learning.
- Logical Thinking; building robots, or robot arms and programming them to perform a task.
- Sequencing and reversibility, the children will code in sequence, stringing a series of concepts together to perform a task.
The advantage of being hosted by Little Plaza, is that synergy with other activities. For example, there is a “Show and Tell”, where the session can be a “build and tell”, and the children can explain how they get to this solution. Building robots is about experimentation and “Everyday Science” focuses on the Scientific Method which is a fundamental part of science.
It is almost like, the designers had Piaget’s children’s cognitive development model in mind when they created these educational robots. McRobotface Club will look to introduce every major educational robotics platforms to utilise the uniqueness of each platform. Ozobots and Marty will be added in due course.
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Personal note
The Robotics Club is like trekking for me, like how the Sherpa showed me Annapurna Circuit Trek and guided me through the sights. 12 days of no stop guiding and each day the altitude and scenery were different. I hope I can be a guide through this particular journey of discovery, like Annapurna Circuit Trek, it is there to be experienced.
Adventures of Delboy 