{"id":11529,"date":"2016-06-27T02:27:45","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T16:27:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legoeng.local\/?p=11529"},"modified":"2017-03-30T12:48:26","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T01:48:26","slug":"a-week-in-the-life-10-candy-sorter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legoeng.local\/a-week-in-the-life-10-candy-sorter\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in the Life #10: Candy Sorter"},"content":{"rendered":"

I teach an introductory course using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set. My students are 7th graders who are required to take the course and may not necessarily have any background in programming\/building. My school is on a trimester schedule so the course runs for thirteen weeks at a time. For this particular trimester I have one class of thirty-two\u00a0students and one class of thirty-four students. I meet each class for one 50-minute period each day, five days a week. I have thirty-four computers in my classroom and one EV3 kit for every two students. I\u2019ve been teaching this class in its current form for two years, though I\u2019ve been teaching Robotics for eight all together.<\/em><\/p>\n

As a teacher I often waver between two approaches to unit challenges: 1) to narrowly define the scope of the challenge, so all students work\u00a0on very similar projects and 2) to leave a challenge wide open so that students get to choose how they want to approach it. The first method allows me to more easily teach and assess specific concepts and the final project usually contains my desired outcomes. As a drawback, when students are given a narrowly defined challenge, there’s little free choice and therefore not a lot of buy-in. The second method increases student buy-in by allowing them free choice. It makes my job as a teacher harder because often times great projects will stray away from the main concept I want them to use; but of course I am loathe to shut down anything I see students engaged in, proud of, and working hard on.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I find that sweet spot that combines the two approaches. That is how my sensor unit\u00a0morphed into the Candy Sorter Challenge.<\/p>\n

For this challenge I would start out with some basic information about sensors and a simple obstacle course challenge on my classroom tables.<\/p>\n