(From left): Charlotte Palmer and Lexi Lomax
Barbara sported a bright blue bow as she made her way down the Middle School hallway, just past the lockers. Her classroom was nearby. She had to be back in the classroom in three minutes, but the hallway offered a brief excursion to demonstrate her success in the robotics “Unplugged Programming Challenge.”
Barbara is a robot, created by seventh graders Charlotte Palmer and Lexi Lomax in teacher Katie Chustz’s seventh grade science class.
“You are thinking like engineers today,” Katie Chustz instructed her class of 20 students. “If you find yourself saying, ‘My robot doesn’t work,’ remember, your robot works, it is just not programmed correctly.” In class, students built and programmed robots whose behavior could respond to motion, touch, sound, distance, or light. Barbara, for instance, was programmed to respond to move forward and backward when sensing motion. A wave of the hand set her off on a venture.
In teams of two the students built and programmed the robots. One student served as the software engineer and the other served as the mechanical engineer. Robots responded to vocal commands, were instructed to move for certain distances, or had touch sensors that determined their behavior. “There is a lot of teamwork involved in building the robots,” explained Chustz, noting that it was interesting to watch the interaction of students as they addressed the challenge.
During the final demonstration, one robot simply shook from side to side, almost as if it were shaking its head, “No, no, no.” What was happening? Too much noise, Chustz explained. The particular robot had been programmed to respond to sound, and the room had grown fairly lively with ten robots roaming about. This robot just needed peace and quiet. It had become a bit too unplugged.
