Coding with Blue-Bots at Holy Cross Glenwood

Holy Cross Primary Glenwood have been exploring the use of Blue-bots to develop problem solving skills through coding.

• The slides immediately below show the development of their coding learning and how the teachers introduced the blue-bots and coding concepts.
• Further on you can see the culmination of the children's learning in a narrative they developed and filmed integrating the coding concepts. ' The Blue-Bot adventure story'

 

The Blue-Bot adventure story

As a culminating piece of work Year 1 students created a collaborative Blue-Bot adventure story integrating their coding knowledge.  The process involved:

1. Students wrote the story collaboratively (1 class wrote the beginning, another the middle and the other class wrote the end). 
2. Students then painted the 4 settings in the story. 
3. Students created the model for the story (using unifix cubes, tissue paper, paddlepop sticks etc.) 
4. Next photos were taken of the 4 settings on the blue-bot app and the student's problem solved to create a creative set of codes for blue-bot to travel across the story. The students had to use the story as a guideline for their commands. 
5. Lastly the story was filmed. 

The narrative adjacent is read along with the video below.  

Click the text image to download the full narrative.

Book week presentation

For the book week presentations there were narrators and the rest of the grade were the 'sound effects' so there was yawning as the sun rose up and the students created a crashing noise when the table collapsed, a triangle was used when Blue-Bot entered the enchanted path as well as the whoosh.

Power up your classroom coding with Blue-Bots

Blue-bots are the next iteration of Bee-Bots.  They add another level of features and functionality that provide students with an even better introduction to coding and control technologies.

If you have already been using Bee-Bots you would know of their use in learning for teaching sequencing, directions, computational thinking, coding, planning and problem solving and many other general capabilities across a range of curriculums

Blue-bots have all the same features as the Bee-Bot but have these other great features

• Programmable wirelessly (via bluetooth) from an iPad App which allows the students to make connections about how programming works without having to actually physically interact with a robot/control technology.
• The App has guided options providing a scaffolded introduction to coding as well as more open ended programming options to deepen learning.
• Student can then utilise other Apps like Explain Everything to record/ capture images from the Blue-bot Apps to extend their thinking on their coding
• Students can easily display their coding and share it with the class via Apple TV.
• Students can create and upload their own maps to the App to use with the blue-bot  which means they can create their own narrative agains which they problem solve.
• Students can save a limited set of their programs which provides them with a way to reflect and debug their program
• Ability to add voice commands to help students reinforce connection with language.
• 45 degree turns in addition to 90 degree turns.
• A clear shell allowing students to see the workings of the robot.