In this video, Mr. Bires discusses how having his students build and program robots can help inspire them and "reinvigorate learning". I thought this was an excellent presentation and a really good idea . The first thing that struck me about this subject was how the use of robots in this way was a great representation of Conrad Wolfram's idea of fusing math, science and real world skills. Mr. Bires mentions in the video that the focus of this lesson is not the robots themselves, but teaching the students the problem solving skills that will help them get their robots up and running. To do this, students have to draw from many subject areas: math, design, engineering and computer programming, just to name a few.
I was also surprised at how young the students in the video were. I would have thought that a project this complex would be geared toward older students. However, it appears that robots can be used with much younger children. I also noticed that all of the students that Mr. Bires featured in his video were male. It made me wonder if a project of this type would have a broad appeal to female students. as well. It could be that female students just weren't featured in this video, but it seems like the subject of robots is a typically male one. I have heard it mentioned that it is sometimes difficult to get younger female students interested in science, so hopefully Mr. Bires has taken this into account and tailored his lesson plan accordingly.
After all, if one of the goals of technology use in schools is to motivate student learning, I can't think of a much better project than this one. A piece of tech that students actually build themselves seems like the ultimate way to keep students engaged. The fact that it fuses together so many aspects of the curriculum makes it so much the better.
No comments:
Post a Comment