Saturday, March 6, 2010

Science Saturday

 
At Adams State College, where both my husband and I work, they have started a program called Science Saturday. It is geared towards school age kids from kindergarten to high school. The program has only been running for a few months and there hadn't been that many kids attending, until today. Over the past two weeks they have been doing quite a bit of advertising and today's topic - Lego Robots - drew a crowd. I'd guess about 30 kids and about 20 parents. They learned about robots in general - how they work, their limitations and strengths. Then the kids had the opportunity to program a Lego Robot, download the program into an actual robot and then watch your robot execute your program. It was fun, but chaotic.

In the photo below, Parker and Jamie are doing one of the introduction exercises. One person, Jamie, has a picture with a grid super imposed over it. He then has to tell the other person, Parker, 1 or 0, depending on whether or not the square has part of the picture inside it or not. Then Parker had to shade in the appropriate square. They didn't get very far. Time was short for the exercise which caused Parker to get quite frustrated. But he really enjoyed getting to program a real robot.

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