After popular request, in this post I explain how to teach the “How to train your robot” class.
The class is split in two parts.
Part 1 – Guess The Robot
The first part is a game called “Guess the robot”. I show kids slides of different robots and they have to guess what the robot is or what it’s special ability is. At the end of the presentation I explain to them how robots work. In addition, I had a real robot that moved when kids clapped or screamed at it. I used it to show the robot parts and we had some fun making it move around.
You should be able to finish this part of the class in 15-20 minutes depending how many questions the kids ask.
Part 2 – Train Your Robot
The basic process was to get all the kids together to explain to them the game. I use my slides to do that. Then I hand out the dictionaries and pen and paper. I gather all the kids an parents and we first act through all the moves. Then I write a simple program on a piece of paper “move forward, turn left, move forward” and I ask kids to show me what it does. After that we start doing the obstacle course (which I have setup before starting the class).
After they get their “robots” to bring back the ball you tell the kids to invent their own “moves” and so they have their parents doing funny stuff 🙂
You should be able to finish this part in 30-40 minutes before the kids’ attention span degrades to zero…
Class Materials
The materials I put together to run the class:
- Presentation Slides (and Presenter’s Notes) [Ελληνικά, Deutsch – Christian Mennerich]
- A laptop or iPad to show the slides.
- The Robot Language Dictionary [Ελληνικά, Deutsch – Rita Freudenberg]
- One pen and paper per kid (for kids to write programs and hand them to their robot parents).
- A space where you can arrange obstacles (one or two obstacles to make kids add turns to their programs is enough. I used a gym as you can see in the videos posted on Facebook, but I’ve also run the class in a room with chairs arranged as obstacles).
- A ball per kid-robot pair (the ultimate goal is for the robot to get the ball and bring it back to the beginning).
- Optional yet fun: A real robot. I bought and built my own basic robot ($50). It took about an hour to assemble.
Class Dynamics
- Five year olds are better when left alone to create their special moves. They get very creative.
- Seven year olds need more guidance because they have too many ideas. They’d rather be told what moves to invent.
- I’d recommend no more than 6 kids in the class, so you can have the situation under control.
- Try to regroup the kids after their robots get the ball. Explain to them that now they can invent new moves.
- Parents beware, you may have a serious workout. Kids love to make you repeat stuff 100 times. I advise to wear comfortable clothes.
I would love to hear your findings and see photos from you running the class at home or school.
I hope we learned something useful today,
DrTechniko
DrTechniko - Making kids literate in technology 
[…] and technology concepts through stories. « Story 5 – Author’s Discussion Teaching the “How to train your robot” class […]
Ok! Last night I had the opportunity to teach this class to Tiger Scouts of pack 279 in Jacksonville FL. The Tigers were all seven with the exception of one. Some changes were that we set up one compiler (me) and had them all write three programs for me to execute. We were inside so we had limited space. Key concepts easily adopted were looping. Then I went into setting parameters to define a child step, adult step and woman step. Then we further defined these by exact measurement. Took about 45 min. We had 10 Tigers and 10 Akelas.
Some things I noticed immediately was the vocabulary gap. One Tiger thought we were going to actually execute someone! Also, some children wrote the program from left-to-write, bottom-to-top, in a circle (circular reference detected). After the first program I mentioned that they should write from top to bottom with one instruction per line, unless they were looping.
So, last night I taught this class to 10 seven year old Tiger Scouts from Pack 279 in Jacksonville FL.
Things I changed:
1. Created one compiler me vs having the parents/akelas execute the program. This was mainly for space reasons, we were in a classroom.
2. We wrote three programs.
Concepts:
1. Learned looping after the first program.
2. Learned to define parameters (child step = 2ft) This was so we could learn about accuracy.
Overall it was good. Learned that some of the Tigers programs were written from bottom-to-top, left-to-write and one was a circle (circular reference was fun).
The language was a barrier some children thought we were going to actually execute!
It was fun. I also reinforced to parents that programming was the best second language they could teach their children.
Bravo! I’m happy to see activity in this space. I hope the materials I have and will produce as I teach these classes will help you out as well.
Best of luck! Please, do keep in touch via the Facebook page (www.facebook.com/drtechniko).
Many, thanks for this post and the lessons, I have done similar things before having kids program each other after seeing videos of Seymour Papert having one kid being the turtle and other kids programming them.
I gave a class to a group of ten kids ages 10-16 and used your “Robot Language Dictionary”
It went very well, more details and lessons I learned are in my blog post (http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-train-your-robot.html).
I plan on using your worksheet for some workshops in Argentina an Uruguay for OLPC later this month.
Excellent. I’m happy you found the lesson plan and material helpful. Your findings were very insightful. Keep up the good work!
Here is a sample handout of the “Diccionario del Lengua Robot” (Robot Language Dictionary) for a workshop I will be giving in Uruguay.
http://mrstevesscience.blogspot.com/2012/05/dr-techniko-in-spanish.html
I’ll start with this, then move into having them program some of the 40 mathematical shapes challenges using Etoys.
This is great. Please send photos of the workshop!
In dutch:https://skitch.com/vinnyl/8986g/robot-taal-woordenboek
Awesome work Vincent! I’ll post your picture in the DrTechniko Facebook page.
We are doing a Book Sprint at the Google Doc Sprint Summit 2.0 for Etoys (open source educational program for kids – http://www.squeakland.org) and I would like to reference your work and include a copy of the “Robot Language Dictionary” sheet in the book. Its a free and open source book published through Floss Manuals. Thanks for a great resource.
I think that this article is interesting but do u have anything for my level I am 11 and I know a tiny bit about programming in VBA but I don’t know much about robots and I’d like to get started 🙂
Hi Ryan,
I’ve used the Finch Robot in a class to show kids how a real robot is programmed (http://www.finchrobot.com/). Unfortunately the usb cable of the Finch is a problem. However, you can program it in a lot of languages and it comes at a decent price. I would start with Python if I were you.
Also you should have a look at Code Academy (http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0). My advice is to focus on the fundamentals of programming (algorithms, data structures) and then you can learn any new language quickly. And then it’s going to be very easy to program robots. Best of luck!
Thank u so much:):):)
Programming’s not for you? How about thinking? Be empowered….
…
[…] quieres intentar hacer este “experimento”, puedes encontrar también algunas diapositivas y otro material que el mismo Nikos Michalakis usa cuando pone en práctica esta […]
Anyone ever try this with adults? I am looking for a team exercise to show how self-directed teams work best (i.e. not robots / micro-management)
Yes, I did it with a group of adults and it went well. In regards to using it to show how well self-directed works better than micro-management, I basically gave them a goal: program the robot to “go to the other side of the room and pick up the bottle of water and the simple set of guidelines (Dr. Techniko sheet) and they did fine. Although in a sense they are “micro-managing” the robot, so you will probably need to ensure they focus on what they can accomplish with a simple well defined actionable goal, rather than they just “micro-managed” the robot to do a task 🙂
Thank you for sharing the game!
I organized it recently as an intro to programming for the RailsGirls Krakow event. It was fun and it helped drive the point home about what programming is and how machines operate. http://dira.dev/2013/04/29/the-robot-game-at-railsgirls-krakow
I did not find the licence for your robot illustrations, so I used one for the presentation and tagging the robots.
Hi Irina,
Great initiative. Using the illustrations is fine since you acknowledged DrTechniko. Looking forward to your translation of the Robot Dictionary in Romanian and Polish!!
[…] How to train your robot–a lesson plan from Dr. Techniko–youngers […]
I was looking for some unplugged coding lessons to present during my CUE session! This lesson is just perfect!