LESSON 4: Maze challenge and Mexican wave
Reinforce learning – Students use knowledge from lessons 1 through 3 to achieve two fun open ended activities.
In this lesson students complete two programming activities.
Program 1– Driving challenge
Students choose a driving challenge for their robot and then write a program for it. Some examples are:
- Drive around an obstacle, such as a cup or pencil case
- Drive around the border of a desk without driving off the edge
- Create a maze on a large piece of paper for the robot to drive through
- Create a maze using building blocks for the robot to drive through
Program 2 – Mexican wave robot style
This is a fun class activity that has everyone’s robot executing the same program at a slightly different time. The result is similar to a Mexican wave or choreographed dance.
Students write a short program with a ‘cool’ sequence of robot moves. They are also encouraged to use light and sound in their programs.
The class (or teacher) selects the program with the best/’coolest’ set of moves. This program is then shared with all other students. Each student then adds an event wait icon to the beginning of the program.
To form a Mexican wave effect each student programs a slightly different time into the new event wait icon. For example:
Robot 1 – Event wait time 0 seconds
Robot 2 – Event wait time 0.2 seconds
Robot 3 – Event wait time 0.4 seconds
Robot 4 – Event wait time 0.6 seconds
Robot 5 – Event wait time 0.8 seconds
Robot 6 – Event wait time 1.0 seconds
Robot 7 – Event wait time 1.2 seconds
Robot 8 – Event wait time 1.4 seconds
Robot 9 – Event wait time 1.6 seconds
Robot 10 – Event wait time 1.8 seconds
Robots 1 through 10 are placed in a line in order of their delay time. Everyone then presses play at the same time and stands back to watch the performance.
Note: Apple do not allow for importing of files in iOS, so this activity might not be possible if you use iPads.
