Week 1: Teaching with robots (Part 1: Introduction)

This is a summary/transcript of Prof. Jennifer Kay's video course Week 1: Teaching with robots (Part 1: Introduction):

In this video you will hear about Jennifer Kay's motivation for promoting teaching with robots in schools and Introduction to
Associate Prof. Janet Moss - Rowan University
Rufus Wright - Technology Coordinatior West Avenue School
Nick Handley - Sixth Grade STEM teacher Hartford School
Melissa Quin - Eight Grade Math Pemberton

ROBOTS FOR EDUCATION (Part 2: Why We Teach LEGO Robotics and an Introduction to Other Educational Robots)

Why LEGO Mindstorms robots

1. popular in schools
2. FLL (First LEGO League) competitions motivates and encourage students
3. WRO (World Robotics Olympiad) competitions open to wider range of ages even up to universities)
4. Robo Cup Junior - primary school to age 19, not exclusive to LEGO but many uses LEGO
5. School clubs
6. Uses Graphical Languages which uses drag and drop programming blocks
7. Other robots (not included in course but links to them can be found in the Resources section

VexIQ

Scribbler

mOway

Hummingbird

Thymio

Finch

Week 1 - ROBOTS FOR EDUCATION: (Part 1: LEGO Mindstorms Robots)

This is a quick transcript of Prof. Jennifer Kay's video course on Week 1 - ROBOTS FOR EDUCATION: (Part 1: LEGO Mindstorms Robots):

LEGO's robots
1st robot - RCX
2nd robot - NXT (no longer for sale but very similar to EV3 and can still be used)
3rd robot - EV3 (course assume you are using EV3 Educational or Home version)

Week 1 - INTRODUCTION (Part 3: Additional Support)

Prof. Jennifer's video course on Week 1 - INTRODUCTION (Part 3: Additional Support)

Below is a very brief summary:

Course forum - Q & A

One-on-one tutoring

Surveys

Feedback

The above seem to be meant more for the initial or initial few batches of participants as I could not find any link to the course forum, tutoring or surveys. The only one I found was for Resources

Week 1: INTRODUCTION (Part 2: Course Structure)

Prof. Jennifer Kay's video lesson on Week 1: INTRODUCTION (Part 2: Course Structure)

Below is a quick summary

Course Structure:
Week 1: Introduction to robots, hardware, software
Week 2: Setting up
Week 3: Picture, sound, motion
Week 4: Looping, waiting, switching
Week 5: Robot Educator, data logging and more

Week 1 - Introduction to Educational Robotics (No Robot Required!!)

Prof. Jennifer Kay's Week 1 -Introduction to Educational Robotics (No Robot Required!!)

This is a transcript (with Prof. Jennifer's permission) of the above so one can read quickly or as revision rather then listening to the video which is more time consuming.

Prof. Jennifer Kay is Professor for Computer Science and Director of Rowan University Laboratory for Educational Robotics.

Much of her work focuses on robotics outside of Computer Science.

This is a course for K12 teachers with no prior robotics experience EV3 in and after schools. Robots can be used for all sorts of context for 3rd Grade Maths to 7th Grade Technology, even High School Physics. Can also help introduce students to computer Science which will be useful for studies of all sorts of field.

About the course

Sponsored by Google CS4HS (Computer Science for High School)

Designed for K12 teachers

Free for anyone

No prior experience needed

Designed for absolute beginners

This course is meant for LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Education set but is also OK of the retail/home/commercial version.

Educational Robots for Absolute Beginners – EV3 Edition (Welcome)

Prof. Jennifer Kay and Rowan University has created a course on robotics for beginners meant for teachers at Educational Robots for Absolute Beginners – EV3 Edition (Welcome)

Brief introduction to the course plus testimonies from past participants, many of them absolute beginners to robotics and programming without prior experience.

Lesson 54: DANCING ROBOTS! (Part 2: The Move Steering Block)

This is a summary/transcript of Prof. Jennifer's Week 3 - More about EV3 Brick: Dancing Robots Part 2: The Move Steering Block.

The Move Steering block assume your motors are connected to port B and C of the EV3 brick
The first Selector is called the MODE selector.

If you select ON FOR ROTATION (#) then you specify how many rotations the motor should rotate (can be a decimal - move a fraction of 1 rotation)

If you specify On for Rotation, then you specify on for how many rotation in this area:

The above shows On for 0.5 rotations means the wheel will rotate half a rotation.

If you specify On for Degree, you must specify how many degrees you want the motor to rotate and it must be a whole number:

The above shows that Steering is set to rotate for 90 degrees which is a quarter of a rotation. (360 degrees is 1 whole rotation)

You may also specify On for seconds. You may specify decimals (fraction of a second) If you specify On for rotations or On for degrees, the motor will rotate the exact number of rotations or degrees. However if you specify On for seconds, the motor will move the exact number of seconds but how many rotations it rotate may depend on the battery level etc.

There are 2 more options ON and OFF which Prof Jennifer will discuss later.

There is also a slider bar for you you adjust to make command the 2 motors to make the robot go straight,

to the left

or to the right.

The second slider is the Power slider, When set to 100, the robot move at full speed. When set to a low level (what is low level depend on your robot setup, heavy or light, or the gearing), the robot stop. When set to negative, the robot reverse.

The last option is BREAK AT END and can be set to TRUE (tick) or FALSE (cross). When set to TRUE, the brake will be applied at the end of the duration or no brake (free to coast [freewheeling]).

Once you learned how to make motor/robot moves you can program robots to do all kind of things, like do a dance.

Get more detailed information from Prof. Jennifer's video at DANCING ROBOTS! (Part 2: The Move Steering Block)

Mindstorms EV3 - writing long programs

Week 4 - Programming your EV3: Part 3: Writing long programs)

This is a transcript of Prof Jennifer's Educational Robotics for Absolute Beginners. Greater details can be obtained from her video: More about the Software (Part 3: Writing long Programs)

Suppose you are creating a long program and is running out of space, one thing you can do is to use the pan tool and drag the blocks around so you can get more space to add more blocks:

Drag the blocks to the left so you have more space at the end to add blocks. To stop panning, click the pan tool again.

Another neater way to get more space would be to break to sequence of blocks into 2 blocks, arrange them one above the other and use the sequence wire to connect them. Get out of the pan tool and click on the select tool .

Click on one of the sequence plug to break the sequence of blocks

Then you can use the select tool to bundle the separated sequence of block together and pull them down below the first blocks

However, the arrangement is not neat as the sequence wire runs through the blower blocks of codes. To make it less ugly, you can click the sequence connector (the other end of the sequence plug) to break the connection. Reconnect them by hovering the mouse over the sequence plug till you see a "spool of wire" then drag it down and then to the left till it align slightly in front of the lower sequence connector, pull it down then to the right to connect to the sequence connector and you will have a neater arrangement of a long program.

Overview: Sorting out your hardware and software

The first task is to open box, sort the parts into the sorting tray:

Mindstorms EV3 parts sorting tray diagram

Then you need to sort out your hardware and software

• Install rechargeable battery pack (Educational Kit)
• Build the robot
• Install the software on your computer
• Start up the software
• Connect the EV3 to the computer
• Upgrade the EV3 firmware

Hour of Code: Great resource to learn programming (coding

Robotics is comprises the hard physical parts (motors, sensors, gears, connections, etc.) and part soft programming (coding). All programs, including programming the EV3 involves writing instructions one after another (inline), looping, branching, etc. The differences will be in the languages used.

A volunteer organization has created Hour of code which is an amazing resources for children of all ages to start learning coding. Do visit the Hour of code to see what they offer.

Mindstorms EV3 Content Editot: How to close

When you are creating or editing a Mindstorms EV3 program, you may see a large blank window at the top right. That is called a CONTENT EDITOR.
The content editor is a very powerful tool which you can use to document (describe) the program so that another person reading your program can understand how it works.
When you are a beginner, your program may be small/short and easy to understand what it does but later when you start writing long program, you will find the CONTENT EDITOR very useful.
It will be also very useful when your program doesn't work as you want it to do and you want to find out what may be wrong and how to correct it.

However there may be times when you find the CONTENT EDITOR troublesome, hiding part of your program so you can't see it and you want to close it.

This is how you close the Content Editor. Move your mouse over to the top right corner of the window and you may see a tool tip that pops up and read CLOSE CONTENT EDITOR. Click it and the Content Editor will close (see screenshot below).

Mindstorms EV3: How to close Content Editor

When you need to view the Content Editor you can click the same corner to open it again.