Author: madeleineedwards

by

Hour of Code Activity – My Robotic Friends

Year Level: All ages (adapt complexity to year group) K – 7

Subject: Technologies

Resource: My Robotic Friends – Hour of code

Strand: Digital Technologies

Sub Strand: Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding – Representation of data

Content Descriptor: Data can have patterns and can be represented as pictures and symbols (ACTDIK002)

Cross Curriculum priorities:
– Literacy
– Numeracy
– ICT
– Critical and creative thinking

Links to other learning areas: Science

How to use this resource: This teaching programming is a great resource you can use to teach the students about coding and algorithms without computers. It is a fun hands on activity that involves all students and teaches them computational thinking, coding and programming.

The aim of this resource is for the programmers to create a code using the symbols for the robot to make. The robot runs through the code following the programers instructions.

Introduce concept – Ask students if anyone has heard of robotics, have you seen a robot? Start to introduce the terminology used when talking about robots, i.e. instructions, algorithms, etc.

Design a set of symbols you will use for your coding – complete this as a whole class and ensure everyone is aware on how to use these symbols and what they mean. Example of symbols you could use:

Screen Shot 2016-01-09 at 5.46.48 pm

Steps for lesson:
1. Choose 1 robot per team
2. Send robot to “Robot Library” while the “programmers” code
3. Choose 1 image from the cup stack pack for each group
4. Groups will create and algorithm for how the robot should build the stack
5. Coders will translate their algorithm to arrows (symbols key)
6. When finished the stack they may retrieve their robot
7. Upon return, robot reads the symbols and translates them back into movements.
8. The group watches for incorrect movements, then work together to debug their program before asking the robot to re-run it

After covering all the basics to Robotics its time to have some fun and complete some activities. This activities can be found on this link. https://csedweek.org/files/CSEDrobotics.pdf 

Review: I think this is great teaching resource as you are teaching the use of digital technology without using a computer. The students are learning all the relevant skills needed on a fun hands on activity. This activity lines up nicely with teaching students about computational thinkings as they are organising data logically, breaking down problems into parts, designing and implementing algorithm and interpreting patterns.

Link to resource: https://code.org/learn & https://csedweek.org/files/CSEDrobotics.pdf

 

by

ORIGO Slate – Stepping Stones (Mathematics)

Resource: ORIGO Slate – Stepping Stones

ResizedImage294200-2013AU-SS-Journals

maxresdefault 797a9-phonto-367

Subject: Technologies

Year Level: K – 6

Strand: Digital Technologies

Sub Strand: Digital Technologies Knowledge and Understanding

Content Descriptor: Identify, use and explore digital systems (hardware and software components) for a purpose (ACTDIK001)

Cross Curriculum priorities:
– Literacy
– Critical and creative thinking
– Numeracy
– ICT

Links to other learning areas: Mathematics

How to use this resource: Stepping Stones is an online resource where teachers can log into to teach mathematics. This resource also comes with a hard copy book for the students to complete their units of work in covering certain maths topics. This program is used as an interactive source to teach mathematics using a hands on approach. This program is delivered online to give teachers one central location to access all their lesson plans, student activity pages and teaching tools.

Review: I personally believe this is a great resource to use in the classroom for any age group. I used this resource on my second year prac (Year 5 class) and had lots of fun with it. Due to mathematics not being one of my best subjects to teach I found it was a great guide and flexible to adjust lessons if need be. Having it as a visual tool on the interactive whiteboard and working through questions in groups using the interactive whiteboard made learning the maths concepts more exciting for the children, and all students participated as they wanted a go on the interactive whiteboard.

It was a great tool for my visual learners and also assisted me when explaining the maths concept to the students, as they could all see the problem in front and we were able to work collaboratively to solve the problem. Also having textbooks to follow along with is great as well, this gives students the opportunity to move ahead confidently or stay at the same pace as the whole class on the interactive whiteboard.

Link to website: http://www.origoeducation.com/stepping-stones?mageloc=AU