Author: Arjen

New Mirobot v3 arrival in Australia

Here’s our batch of brand new Mirobot v3 kits on their arrival in Australia, dozens stacked. Since the v3 have a neat acrylic frame, I think I’ll do a proper “unboxing” and first build video of one soon, so you can see for yourself what this is about.

Many classes of year 5 and 6 students around Brisbane and their teachers have done our Robotics Workshops in recent years (using the Mirobot v1 and v2), and others have purchased their own Mirobot to build and use at home.  And schools around Australia order sets to run their own programs.

What’s special about the v3 is that it’s now possible to repeatedly build and (carefully) disassemble the Mirobots, which means that not only the programming but also the assembly process can be repeated for future cohorts.

Below is an animation of the v3 kit build process:

The Mirobot is a “logo” turtle: it takes a pen (up&down) and can move forward/reverse (in mm) and turn left/right (in degrees).  So, Mirobot can draw, and that’s really important because it provides students with very direct feedback for their programming.  There are also bump and line-following sensors.

Students engage with inquiry-based learning: first the build which involves learning about the components and the mechanical structure – then, programming from a “simple” square, to a house, circle, stars and much more complex patterns.  Students also make them write letters.  Sure!

Most of the current batch was already pre-ordered, but we have some regular stock.

 

Vale Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of Galileo Galilei‘s death (8 March 1942), and died on the anniversary of Albert Einstein‘s birth (14 March).   Having both reached the age of 76, Hawking actually lived a few months longer than Einstein, in spite of his health problems.  By the way, what do you call it when a set of unrelated facts match up like that?  That’s right: coincidence!

While Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time” is apparently “the most popular book never read”, I own it and have read it.  While it’s definitely not easy-going, he did have a good stab at making the complex physics understandable, and I found it very worthwhile – a fascinating read.

I think Hawking was a great scientist because he came up with grand ideas, but was quite happy to be disagreed with.  Often the matter wouldn’t be settled for decades, and once it was, he was also quite happy to concede if he was wrong.  Sometimes he’d even even declare himself wrong on one of his own earlier hypotheses.  This approach is an excellent example of how science advances.  Explanations can be improved, proven wrong, or strengthened through observations and calculations.  Many complex matters cannot be proven “correct” directly, so a hypothesis can often only be disproven – that is, when an observation is made that doesn’t match the hypothesis, and that observation is repeated by others and thus validated, then either the hypothesis needs to be tweaked, or discarded.

Hawking was also an excellent role model for many young students as apart from his excellent attitude towards scientific research and good sense of humour, he was a key example of how having a serious disability does not necessarily preclude one from doing great things.  He was also adventurous, and sometimes quite reckless driving his wheelchair.

Melbourne artist, Mitchell Toy, has produced a beautiful image to commemorate Hawking’s passing.

 

Election Activity Bundle

For any Australian Curriculum HASS topic from Prep to at least Year 6, we can safely say “We have a resource on that!”

So when, like here in Queensland, an election is suddenly called and teachers want to do some related activities in class, we actually already have the materials for you as these topics are covered in the Civics & Citizenship Australian Curriculum in Years 4, 5 and 6.  To make selecting suitable resources a bit easier, we have assembled an Election Activity Bundle containing everything you need, available for just $9.90 for non-subscribers.

Children are interested in topical issues in society and their local community. After all, it’s adults making decisions now about issues that will affect our children. And regardless of what opinions we hold on particular topics, learning how the voting system works, with assistance from free additional resources by the AEC (Australian Electoral Commission), is useful. With our Election Activity Bundle, you have everything you need to guide the learning process.

Serendipitously, classrooms and schools running with our units actually will cover these topics in this term as well, around now in the week planning.

Borrowing a Pencil

Student: Can I borrow a pencil?

Teacher: I don’t know. Can you?

Student: Yes. I might add that colloquial irregularities occur frequently in any language. Since you and the rest of our present company understood perfectly my intended meaning, being particular about the distinctions between “can” and “may” is purely pedantic and arguably pretentious.

Teacher: True, colloquialism and the judicious interpretation of context help us communicate with nuance, range, and efficiency. And yet, as your teacher, my job is to teach you to think about language with care and rigour. Understanding the shades of difference between one word and another, and to think carefully about what you want to say, will give you greater power and versatility in your speech and writing.

Student: Point taken. May I have a pencil?

Teacher: No, you may not. We do not have pencils since the department cut funding for education again last year.

Maths Challenge (Basic Operations)

As we are working on expanding our resources in the Maths realm, we thought it would be fun to start a little game here.

Remember “Letters and Numbers” on SBS? (Countdown in UK, Cijfers en Letters in The Netherlands and Belgium, originally Des Chiffres et des Lettres in France).

The core rules for numbers game are: you get 6 numbers, to use with basic operations (add, subtract, multiply, divide) to get as close as possible to a three digit target number. You can only use each number once, but you don’t have to use all numbers. No intermediate result is allowed to be be negative or contain a fraction. Positive integers only, all the way.

Now try this for practice:

Your 6 numbers (4 small, 2 large):    1     9     6     9     25     75

Your target: 316

We’re not worrying about a time limit, as it’s about the problem solving.

If you want, comment on this post with your solution (full working)!