The Mirobot v2 logo turtle robotics kits will be here shortly. These are the updated version of the kits we have been using at primary schools (year 4-6) this year in our Robotics and Programming workshops. The new model doesn’t require little pegs any more, the structure now holds itself together with a beautiful designed slot mechanism. Kudos to Ben Pirt for an awesome design!
The robot frames are made of lasercut MDF, and the circuit board is Arduino controlled. All aspects of the design is open and available. The robot can be used to draw, but now also comes with bump sensors and line following capabilities. Communication is through wifi over a raw or web socket. There are a number of programming and control options, from Scratch-style visual systems to a brand new Python library!
By default the v2 comes with a pre-soldered circuit board, but especially for OpenSTEM Ben is offering a non-soldered PCB so we can continue doing the soldering part with classes also. We have found this to be both a great enabler for students, as well as teach that people can build things almost from scratch. But you choose… we keep both the soldered and un-soldered kits. Either way, this is a great project to do with your kids at home, quite a few parents of students that do our workshops also continue in this way.
If you order now, we’ll still be able to include you in the first shipment!
Now for Electronics Soldering!If you or your children want to also do some soldering but don’t have the necessary tools yet, we now have sets available. We assemble our own classroom soldering kits ourselves from a number of sources, as sets found in shops have flimsy or awkward stands. We use a solid steel stand, that also features a wire cleaning ball – this works much better than a wet sponge and it is much easier to maintain. We also include a number of other useful items.
Shipping of orders including Mirobots will be in November. This is likely to be our final Mirobot order this side of Christmas, so we do recommend you order now if you want to have the kit available over the holidays.
Let’s say your child is currently a classic consumer – they love watching TV, reading books, but they don’t really enjoy making things themselves. Or maybe they are making some things but it’s not really technological. We think any kind of making is awesome, but one of our favourite kinds is the kind where kids realize that they can build and influence the world around them. There’s an awesome Steve Jobs quote that I love, which says:
“When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and you’re life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money.
That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it…
Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
A beautiful and insightful song. I don’t quite agree with the phrasing of the notes at the end, but I think I understand the obvious expression of frustration behind it.
The things we learn at school, from maths and science to history, are useful – but they often get taught lacking context, and in a way that doesn’t connect with students. This makes for disjointed snippets of information, which consequently can’t really be regarded as knowledge.
Thus, I think the issue is not directly about “proving” that there is a practical use for what is getting taught. When we teach differently, its meaning, context and relevance becomes apparent. We see this in practice all the time. When students understand the why, they immediately become much more engaged.
Being involved with teaching young students to code, I have come to the tentative conclusion that many coding kids have not actually been taught programming. This has been going on for a while, so some of this cohort are now themselves teaching others.
I have noticed that many people doing programming actually lack many of the fundamental skills that would make their programs efficient, less buggy and even just functional.
Naturally, many (most!) of the things described there are familiar to me, and it’s interesting to review them. But contrary to Esther, I still do apply some of those techniques – I don’t want to miss them, as they serve a very important purpose, in understanding as well as for producing better code. And I teach them to students.
Programming is about smartly applied laziness. Students are typically aghast when I use that word, which is exactly why I use it, but the point is that smartly applied laziness is not the same as slackness. It’s simply a juicy way of describing “efficient”.
Suppose you need to shift some buckets of water. You could carry one bucket at a time, but you’ll quickly find that it’s hard on your arm and shoulders, as well as wasting the other arm you have. So we learn that if you have more than one bucket to shift, carrying only one bucket at a time is not the best way of going about it. Similarly, trying to carry three or more buckets is probably going to cost more time than it saves, as well as likely spilling water all over the place.
Thus, and this was of course worked out many centuries ago, carrying two buckets works best and is the most efficient as well as being quite comfortable – particularly when using a neat yet simple tool called a yoke (as pictured).
Inevitably, most kids will have at some time explored this issue themselves (perhaps while camping), and generally come to the same conclusion and insight. This is possible because the issue is fairly straightforward, and not obscured by other factors. In programming, things are not always so transparent.
Our modern programming tools (high-level languages, loose typing, visual programming, extensive APIs and libraries) enable us to have more convenience. But that convenience can only be applied judiciously when the programmer has the knowledge and skills required to make appropriate judgements. Without that, code can still be produced rapidly, but the results are not so good.
Some would say “good enough”, and that is somewhat true – when you have an abundance of computing power, memory and storage, what do a few bytes or cycles matter? But add together many of those inefficiencies, and it does become a rather dreadful mess. These days the luxury of abundance has become seriously abused. In our everyday life using laptops, smart-phones, tablets and other devices, we frequently encounter the consequences, and somehow regard it as “normal”. However, crashing apps (extreme case but very common) are not normal, and we should not regard any of this as good enough.
I see kids being taught to code using tools such as MIT’s Scratch. I reckon that’s fine as a tool, but in my observations so far the kids are only being shown how to do specific things the particular app or environment. Some kids will have a natural knack for it and figure out how to do things properly, others will plod along and indeed get through by sheer determination, and some will give up – they might conclude that programming is not for them. I think that’s more than a pity. It’s wrong.
When you think about it, what’s actually happening… in natural language, do we just give a person a dictionary and some reference to grammar, and expect them to effectively use that language? We wouldn’t (well actually, it is what my French teachers did, which is why I didn’t pick up that language in school). And why would computer programming languages be different?
Given even a few fundamental programming techniques, the students become vastly more competent and effective and produce better code that actually works reliably. Is such understanding an optional extra that we don’t really care about, or should it be regarded as essential to the teaching?
I think we should set the bar higher. I believe that anyone learning programming should learn fundamentals of how and why a computer works the way it does, and the various techniques that make a computer program efficient and maintainable (among other attributes). Because programming is so much more than syntax.
Dark narrow streaks, up to a few hundred yards long, are seen along many slopes on Mars including Garni Crater. The identification of waterlogged salts in these streaks fits with the idea that they are formed by the underground flow of briny water that wets the surface.
Proof-of-concept study shows possibilities for mind-controlled technology.
[…]
In the preliminary proof-of-concept study, led by UCI biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic and neurologist An Do, a person with complete paralysis in both legs due to spinal cord injury was able – for the first time – to take steps without relying on manually controlled robotic limbs.
So this is using brainwave-detecting technology to reconnect a person’s brain with part of their body. A very practical example of how science can (re)enable people, in this case give them back their freedom of mobility. That’s fantastic.
Complementary, Honda’s ASIMO robot research can enable people to walk with artificial legs.
Don’t think this is just something that happens in labs! The basic tech is accessible. I have a single sensor EEG headset here, and some years ago I did a demo at a conference entitled “look ma, no hands” where I controlled the slide advance of the presentation on my laptop by doing a “long blink”.
The Mirobot v2 logo turtle robotics kits will be here shortly. These are the updated version of the kits we have been using at primary schools (year 4-6) this year in our Robotics and Programming workshops. The new model doesn’t require little pegs any more, the structure now holds itself together with a beautiful designed slot mechanism. Kudos to Ben Pirt for an awesome design!
If you or your children want to also do some soldering but don’t have the necessary tools yet, we now have sets available. We assemble our own classroom soldering kits ourselves from a number of sources, as sets found in shops have flimsy or awkward stands. We use a solid steel stand, that also features a wire cleaning ball – this works much better than a wet sponge and it is much easier to maintain. We also include a number of other useful items.
The material is much more interesting. When I discussed a topic later in the term, I found that the students…
Laura Davidson, Teacher