Are you counting sleeps? I am. So, little time to get everything finished up for the school year. In this silly season of assessment, reports, presentation practice, graduation events, school year books, class groups for 2017, swimming lessons, sports carnivals, job uncertainty, meetings, tinsel and glitter, we are still teaching and learning.

For myself and my little coders there has been a lot of learning. Earlier in the term, I had the opportunity to attend a great LEGO EV3 Mindstorm workshop in Perth at SciTech. It was a lot of fun, I got to catch up with some past colleagues, and it was challenging. If you have the opportunity to attend a LEGO EV3 event do it, even if you don’t have these robots you can apply the teaching/lesson ideas to most robots. Which is exactly what I did, I modified one of the activities to suit my little coders and their skill level, when working with Ozobots and the Ozoblockly editor.

The activity was to work out how far a LEGO EV3 can travel in one rotation of the wheel. It was an interesting 5 minute investigation, a group of 30 adults were all estimating, calculating, discussing their thoughts on distance. Only a few people in the room calculated the correct distance.

So, I took this little gem of an idea and asked the little coders ‘How far is 5 Ozobot steps?’, ‘How far is 10 Ozobot steps?’. Hhhmmm…no one knew, including me. Now given that I am working with Yr. 1/2 students, I had to make the task achievable. We want a little bit of challenge and investigation, but we also want success and that feeling of pride and achievement. My solution to this was using graph paper, cheap, easy to access (hello, Mr. B, Math/Science Wizard), and we can record our data on it. You need to use 5mm graph paper, the reason being that Ozobots move small distances.

Session One

First, remind students about the Mode 1 block codes in the editor. A quick game of what code is this, using the Mode 1 flash cards.

Then:

• Explain the challenge. How far (the distance) is 5 steps and 10 steps?
• Demonstrate on the IWB, the Ozoblockly editor and which code blocks they need to use. You only need a speed block and the 5/10 step blocks. Show the students the simple sequence…speed block, joined to step block. Remind/demonstrate how to calibrate the robot and program the robot (many students forget the steps).
• Group students into partners.
• Each group needs: one piece of 5mm graph paper, a pencil and an Ozobot. Plus computer with Ozoblockly Editor.
• Demonstrate drawing a straight start line on the paper, repeat this 4 times. You should have 4 start lines along on edge of the paper. Under two of the lines write ‘5 steps’and under the other two write ’10 steps’. 
• Load the program onto a robot. Demonstrate: Run the robot from the starting line. When it stops, use the pencil to mark how far it traveled. Mark off all the 5mm squares covered with that distance. How many squares did it travel? How must distance is this? Discuss measuring in centimeters. How many millimeters in one centimeter? 5mm + 5mm = 10mm = 1cm
• Have students work through their own investigation, calculating the Ozobot steps/distance. How far did it travel?

Session Two

This is where the fun starts and the challenge becomes greater, but you will have to wait for the next blog post, as it is time for me to go to work. Have a great day everyone.