Week 8

This week was our last time biking out to Bethlehem School which meant that we had to make the most of it. ( It was not our last time seeing the Year 4's as they were coming to us after the holidays). This week we were lucky enough to have the huge new hall booked out for the whole 2 sessions which ment we could get more work done with less moving around. Our map has started coming along really well and we were all assigned jobs to do so our session was more productive. Our main goal was to get our robot to go around our map and once we were successful, it was time to get a big head start on our map props. I had the job of fixing any faults in the blackline so that the robot could manover around our map with ease. Of course since we were in a new hall we had to make sure we didn't mark the floor with the PERMENANT markers but of course someone was bound to forget and that person had to be me, it was certinally not the first time either. This ment dire consequences for me in front of the whole of room 2 and 9 i had to scrub the PERMENENT marker off the floor and you know how hard it is to get PERMENENT marker off the ground. I sat there scrubbing for about 30 minutes, at least i know what never to do next time. Definitly a lesson well learn't

Last week was a success. We managed to get a lot of logs done for decorations on our map and we also had time on robot programming. Our first challenge was to get the software for the robots onto the Year 4's laptops, then we had to teach them how to get the robot to go around a black line using the software.  It was successful although there was a bit of competition over who got it to work first between a couple of teams. After that we got onto our map and we thickened the black line as the Year 4's made some logs, it is coming along very well. We have made a plan for next week and hope to get a lot more of our map done.

During our robot unit we are doing a lot of things. We did a track for the robot . We also made the robot to go around a milk bottle. That was confussing. We also had to make the robot to go in a straight line then stop on the line and it had to beep. I really enjoyed drawing the track. Also making the robots do stuff. I also enjoyed programming.

Unfortunately, the eight year old half of the Red Alien Monkeys were away sick so there were only two lots of hands working today. Two girls from another group were left without their older buddies so they worked with us for the day. Despite this, we still got a reasonable amount done on our mapping and programming for the robot.  A successful forest floor plan has been drawn so now we are attempting to upscale the drawing to a six by six area-A3 paper. Currently, when programming the robot, we are trying to master rescue programming which means getting the robot  to follow a black line.  Previously, members of our group have managed this but we have found that just because the robot did it once, it doesn't mean it's simple to get the robot to do it again.

Finally, at the last minute, the robot did follow a fairly straight line and next time our goal is to get our robot to follow a wonky line and stay on track.  Hopefully, our group will be all well and ready to get to work next week!

The 12 year old half of the Red Alien Monkeys

Challenges start to kick in

Today was a successful session for us, most of the time. We biked to BS and made our start on planning our forest floor, after lots of discussion we had a idea of what we had in mind to create a Hansel and Gretel floor map but weave in a bit of adventure as well. Birds, tunnels, ponds and bridges are all apart of our design. This was our longest session yet and we wanted it to be productive. After morning tea we got down to using the Robots. Our first task was to show the Year fours how to use the NXT Mindstorm software for a simple task, to get the robot to move up to a line and stop we were successful. And then we were told that we had to get our robot to go around two milk bottles, sounds easy enough, well that wasn't the end of it. We had to get the robot to do a figure eight around them. This was the hardest task yet, we were hard at work testing, when we were in the last stages of programming our time ran out and it was time to have a quick lunch and leave. All and all, we learnt a lot of new things about the NXT Mindstorms software and it will help us a lot along the way.

Practice makes Perfect

During Rm 2's robot time in class, we had a programming break through.  After many attempts we finally managed to get our robot to follow the black line that was drawn on two connected sheets of A3 paper.  This was very exciting for us and we are getting more and more confident with the programming software.

The twelve year old half or the Red Alien Monkeys

First Day

Today we got to meet our groups for the first time, we got to know each other and then we got straight down to work. Our group works really well together apart from the occasional difference between us. Our first challenge was to make a robot go around an obstacle and just in the nick of time, we succeeded. Check out the movie below. We enjoyed getting to know each other but as the day was shortened we did not get to spend as much time as we will in the next 7 weeks.