Three McDonald County teachers recently received grants from the McDonald County Schools Foundation for robotics. Bethany Hall, a third-grade teacher at White Rock Elementary School, shared what her grant funded.
"We currently received 30 Edison robots and 15 creative kits to extend the building experience. Each robot is complete with sensors for following a black line, following a light source, activation by sound or clapping, and other various sensors," she said.
"Beyond the basic sensor systems we are currently learning, the robots can be connected to a computer and can repeat a series of code built by students in a program called EdBlocks," she said. "We had a bit of trouble getting our order completed due to some unforeseeable roadblocks with shipping and handling, but now that we have the robots, we are ready for our hands-on experience. Students have been introduced to the coding program and have had the opportunity to scan barcodes and assess that function. Luckily, the Edison website is complete with a teacher manual for lessons, as well as a guided manual for students.
"A few students have been allowed to take a robot home and gather more working knowledge of the bot in order to advance our peer-to-peer learning. They are faster than I am. That is a certainty. Soon, we will expand our lessons to more than once per week and, hopefully, begin sharing with the other third-grade classroom as well. From there, I anticipate forming a group for the coming school year to teach incoming third-graders the ropes. If all goes as planned, we will have some new robots ready for next year's Robot Fest held at the central office. I am so thankful to have received this grant to introduce so many children to a whole new skill set."
In Hall's classroom at White Rock, students were on the floor with their robots, clapping to activate them, watching them move and programming them to do different things.
"I was really excited," she said when she found out she had gotten the grant. "At first I didn't know I had gotten the grant. I had gotten a letter that the central office would fund it." But then she found out about the grant, she said.
Last year, White Rock had robotics club after school, and because of the extreme interest in the club and the limited number of robot kids, they had to limit the number of students who could participate, she said. Third grade only had access to two kits, she said. Hall researched which kits were the most cost-effective. She liked the Edison kits because they are compatible with the Lego bricks used by the school's other robot kits. She also likes the web page used for coding, she said.
"The book is easy to understand. I felt like it was the perfect fit for us at this level," she said. "The field for technology is growing so much," she continued. "Coding, learning to build code that runs the different machinery is a skill that a lot of employers are looking for. We want to give them an early start. Bringing it into the classroom seemed like the next step."
Student Landon Hall was one of those chosen to take home a robot. He programmed his robot to play a tune.
"You can program them and teach them to do different things with the programs," he said.
Jackson Capps, whose father is the assistant principal at the school, was also chosen to take home a robot.
Asked what he and his father did with the robot, he said, "We went on the app and we tried to program it, but we didn't know how, so we printed a book about Edison and there were codes in it, so we scanned the codes and they did different things."
Amanda Kelley was also chosen to take a robot home. Her father has an electronics background.
"We made sure it was working on some of the programs and, if it wasn't, we checked to see what was wrong and we would fix it. Daddy is pretty smart," she said.
Hall said her overall goal is for her class to compete in Robot Fest. She said what she likes about these robots compared to the ones the school had before is they have more sensors and more options for programming. The kits can work together and connect to make a larger robot, Hall said.
"They're supposed to be almost indestructible," she said, as a student dropped his robot. "So that was another good reason to get them."
Her next goal is to get a grant for rechargeable batteries, as each of the 30 Edison robots takes four batteries.
Johnni Ernst teaches fifth-grade math and science at Anderson Elementary. She provided some background on her grant.
"Last year was my first year participating in the Robot Fest and, while there, I noticed that a lot of us had the same robots. When I found out the grant foundation was going to offer a date in October to accept applications, I jumped on the chance to get new and exciting robots that would bring challenges to students, and wow factors to the judges," she said.
"The following robots are what I purchased through the school's foundation grant: Hexbug VEX IQ Robotics Construction Kit. This kit comes with a red and blue robot, that when both are put together can become fighting robots. This was a huge hit among students. Meccano Erector M.A.X., which is an interactive robot with artificial intelligence. MAX, as the students named him, learns the more he is played with. He recognizes faces, memorizes names and tells you jokes. He is a class favorite. Meccano Erector Meccasuaur is a three-foot-long, two-foot-tall dinosaur. I'd say this robot was the hardest for students to build because pieces had to be put in just right for the dinosaur to stand and move on his own. This robot team had a lot of trial and error to get it to stand up without falling over. We also received two robots who stay in the classroom, and students are allowed to work on them for morning work, free time, early finishers.
"Having the grant foundation award students with robots has helped shape my students with lifelong skills. They have learned how to find each other's strengths and assign roles within their groups, what to do when they or a teammate makes mistakes, and how to extend grace to each other when mistakes happen," she said.
Anderson Elementary School teacher Heather Nalley also received a grant for robotics, but could not be reached for comment.
General News on 02/14/2019