The 20 kids we have are all pretty close to the same age overall, so the age split was pretty arbitrary. Today we made some adjustments to the teams. There were a couple of kids that wanted to switch teams so they could be with friends. Everyone was very accommodating and we made the switch easily.
Robot Build (Green team)
We started with the robot from last year. The kids decided that they wanted to keep the robot design as it was from last year rather than tearing it apart and starting again.
They added a second color sensor. Some of us had watched a video showing that two sensors would allow the robot to do a line follow much more efficiently. They also designed a pusher to add to the front to allow them to move a model from the base into a box on the map. We found some problems with the design and worked through them. The meeting ended before we were able to finish the pusher.
Robot Build (Blue team)
We spent some time looking at robot designs from other teams. Since we don't have the new robot, we used an older "brick" to attach the wheels and motors to. The "birck" is the computer.
We were able to get a basic robot built with three wheels. Next week we will start looking at what attachments we need to add to the robot to start tackling missions.
Team building
We want the teams to work together as a team, and since many of the kids don't really know each other, we did a team building exercise to help them get to know each other. We had a sheet with a bunch of comments like, "I have been outside the US", "I have met someone famous", etc.
When the kids started out, both green and blue team found the most efficient way of filling out the form, but this turns out to be the least effective at getting to know each other. They were simply passing the paper around and kids would fill their name in where they matched the statement.
After making sure they talked about what they had written on the page, they all got a chance to learn about each other.
Project
Today both groups learned about the Project Process. This year’s mission is to make our interactions with animals benefit all of us. Students will work for weeks to prepare a project and presentation based on a problem of their choosing. To prepare them for their task, we studied four sample situations in which they learned to identify a relationship between humans and animals and then discussed the problem and resulting solution. The solution may be an invention or idea that improves the current situation.
The first step of the Project Process is to identify a specific problem with the way people interact with a certain animal. Each team must decide on an animal and a problem. This week, we asked the kids to spend some time researching so that their team may vote next Wednesday and we can move forward.
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