3+LEGOS

=LEGOS in Action=

On the second meeting, we were able to get out the WeDo Robotics sets and let the student groups choose which figure they wanted to build. There were four sets to choose from--Amazing Mechanisms, Wild Animals, Play Soccer, and Adventure Stories. I was surprised that no group chose to do any of the soccer robots. We had groups choose at least one from all of the other sets. There was a definite difference in how the boys and girls worked together in their groups. The boys all started grabbing the parts especially the programmable bricks and just plunged right in with no plan or organization. The girls looked at the directions first and then tried to locate all the parts they would need and then started building by adding components one at a time and taking turns. All of the groups, both boys and girls, were successful at building their robots in one session (1.5 hours). The next week we learned how to program the robots. I demonstrated on the SMART board the drop and drag programming model. We had three copies of the software on three laptops so the groups had to take turns programming their robots. The students really seemed to enjoy seeing their robots move and then they were overjoyed when they learned how to record sounds to go with their robots.