Recap: Robots, PVC House Rule the Week
It was a very busy week at Full STEAM Ahead this week, starting with the Mini-Maker Faire at Barnes and Noble over the weekend. We had tons of fun showing off some of our kids’ work and demo-ing some of the cool toys that Barnes and Noble had to offer. In fact, we were so inspired by some of the things they had, we set out to purchase some of our own new toys. Boy, am I glad we did, because they were a big hit this week! More on that later. We brought our 3D Printer with us to Barnes and Noble which certainly drew a crowd, but without a doubt the star of the show was the Rubix Cube solving MindCub3r robot built by 6th graders Tom and Blake. The boys worked diligently for nearly a month on this complex project, and in the end were rewarded with a machine that can do with ease what most of us can only dream of doing–solving a Rxubix cube in about a minute!! See the video below for the first ever successful run (after much tuning), which was followed by many more afterwards at Barnes & Noble in front of amazed onlookers. Way to go Tom and Blake!
Moving into our week of classes, we were armed with two new award-winning robots designed for hours of play with virtually limitless programming potential: Ozobot and Ollie. Both are designed to be a ton o’ fun out of the box, but also are programmable using kid-friendly programming languages. Ozobot is an adorable little robot equipped with several light sensors designed for following lines. Ozobot is pre-programmed to respond to color codes embedded in the lines–essentially it can recognize patterns and respond to them. Our little guys in K-2 STEAM Makerspace loved the Ozobot Turkey Trot: drawing robot responsive turkeys to let the little Ozobot’s run wild. Our older kids used the app to play games of chance, complete mazes, and even dabbled with the programming. We’ve only scratched the surface of what these little bots can do!
Ollie, on the other hand, is 1 part RC car, 1 part stunt junky, 1 part hackable robot. With this new wave of smart, app-controlled toys, kids aren’t left wondering how to “hack” them, or how to modify them to perform specific tasks, increase their speed, strength, or just look cooler. That functionality is built right in! Ollie tore up the floor in our STEAM Makerspace room this week with kids building ramps, race tracks, obstacle courses, and even started tinkering with the durable bot’s brain to figure out new stunts and moves.
Finally, the PVC house/fort constructed by our Wednesday and Thursday Makerspace groups were a huge hit among the students in our classes. Everybody wanted to be in the house (with a working door), ringing the bell (a littleBits button with a custom recording), and turning the working lights on and off (a littlebits dimmmer switch connected to a series of dimmable bright LEDs). It didn’t matter whether it was Guitar, Piano, Minecraft, or Robotics, everybody from every class just had to come check out the amazing work done by our 7 – 10 year olds. The house is still standing, and renovations are being done to improve it every day!
Another week of unbridled learning, curiosity, exploration, and entertainment is in the books at Full STEAM Ahead. As the days and weeks roll by, watching these kids in their element, tinkering, playing, hacking, building, creating, problem solving, innovating, it’s impossible not to think that they are all not going to grow up and change the world. While we know that’s not realistic, it’s entirely possible that the next big idea is brewing in one of these young minds. All that it needs to grow is an environment that inspires and nurtures creativity, innovation, and passion. I couldn’t be prouder to offer that environment to the more than 100 kids that walk through our doors every week, and can’t wait for the day that every kid has these same opportunities.
Of learning