Dash & Dot Robots

This year I was fortunate enough to be part of a pilot group of teachers who got to try out some robots called Dash & Dot by Wonder Workshop.  When our district technology coach asked me if I would be interested in trying them.  I jumped at the opportunity.  Thinking that I would only have one set, I planned on using them with one particular 5th grade class (their were only 12 in that class compared to 28 in the others).  However, by the time the robots came in it was almost time for winter break and then just after break, I was moved to my new position as the elementary technology coach in two of our elementary buildings.  The robots came with me and to my surprise I have five sets to work with, not just one. You can read more about the robots here.

The first group I used the robots with this year, was a group of two boys that are grade accelerated in Math.  They start their school day at the intermediate school for math class then head back over to the elementary for the rest of the day.  Often when these boys returned, their class was just starting their math lessons, so their homeroom teacher and I decided this would be a great enrichment opportunity for them.  We ended up being able to meet about twice a week every other week.  They LOVED it.

The very first day, I started out by just letting them play around and experiment with the robots and apps to see what they could do.  They mostly used the Go app that day and had fun with the lights and sounds.  The next time they came down to work with the robots, I had them do the How Fast and How Far experiment I found though Pinterest and a blog called The Digital Scoop.  Check out the experiment here.  The boys had fun doing the experiment and observed some things about out the robots work.

When they finished their first experiment together, they both had different things they were questioning, one being if the charge of the robot would impact their results.The robot they used was not fully charged and they were charging a second one while they worked together, so one boy decided to do the exact same experiment again with a fully charged robot.  The other boy decided to see if by programming the robot to travel twice as many steps resulted in the robot traveling twice the distance as their first experiment.  They did this using the same set up as the first time, but ran both robots at the same time staying on their side of the tape measure.

Having this information proved to be valuable for future projects, so I would highly suggest you do this experiment or a similar one as one  before doing more complex projects with the robots.  The boys use the information gathered in this experiment for every project they have done so far.  It's definitely a keeper.

Wonder Moodle

In January, I started a new position in our district that will last for the rest of the school year.  I am the Elementary Technology Coach for two of our elementary schools.   The were able to purchase some iPads and laptops for classroom use, so I will be helping teachers integrate them into their teaching.  I will return to my teaching position next year.

One of the projects I am helping with is called the Wonder Project. This is a grant based project that involves four of our 4th grade classes in two of our elementary building (two classes in each building).  The classes are reading the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio in their classes and then having discussions about it online.  We are using our district Moodle to house this project.

Here is a description of the book from the author's website linked above:



The publisher's description:

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?



The purpose of the project is to encourage students to look past appearances and to build a community of respect for others.  Since all of our elementary schools only go up to 4th grade, and every 5th grader will be attending the same school next year, the hope is that the students will have a better understanding of each other when they come together as 5th graders and be models for the other 5th grades on how to build respectful relationships with others.

We started off by getting the students enrolled into the Wonder Moodle.  We then spent time making avatars using Bitstrips and using the snipping tool to capture just the faces.  We asked the students to make their avatars look as much like themselves as possible.

We also talked about the purpose of an avatar why we use avatars instead of our own pictures.  Once we had the avatars saved to their h-drives, we upload them to Moodle.  The students were very excited to see everyone's avatars.  Here is an example (my avatar):

From there the teachers came up with some open ended discussion questions that I added into Moodle.  They also broke their classes in to four groups for discussions to make sure students were connecting with each other.  We used a Q & A forum so that students would have to respond to the teachers' question first before they could see other posts.  We also set it up so that they had to wait about 30 minutes before they could see posts from other students.  This helps us manage the time the students spend on the questions.  

When the students reply to the posts, they follow what I call the CCQ method.  I had learned about something similar to this when I was working on a Flat Classroom Project a few years ago, and have adapted it to my classroom.  I shared this with the teacher working on the Wonder Project and we use it to help the students make strong replies to each other that encourage further discussion.  Here is the sheet the use as a reference:

CCQ Stands for:

• Compliment or Comment (depending on what type of post they are responding to) - State what you like about the post or tell about something you found new or interesting.  
• Connect - Make a connection between the post and your own post, yourself, or the world around you.
• Question - Ask a clarifying or follow-up question that encourages discussion (can't be answered with just a Yes or No).  

The students really seem to be grabbing onto this concept and it bothers them when others don't follow the guidelines, because they want to continue the conversations.  It has been really encouraging to see them working to better themselves through appropriate replies.

So far I think the project is off to a great start.  I look forward to seeing how the students learn and grow throughout the rest of the project.