More computing. more interaction

One of the criticism of the robot programming part of the Junkbots project is not everyone necessarily gets a go at the programming. To address this a new feature has been added to the project. There are now two parallel activities as well as programming a robot; there is a separate programming exercise carried out at the same time which replicates some of the same actions of the robot but this time on screen.

Figure: Robot pushing a barrel

These exercises are based around the increasngily popular Greenfoot software (http://www.greenfoot.org/download/) which is free to download and use. This can be put on as many machines as are need enabling more people to have a go at programming.

The exercises initially gets participants to set-up the world, place a robot within it and get the robot to move across the screen. Building on the each previous exercise, the complexity increases and includes challenges (such as in the figure) where the robot pushes a piece of rubbish (in this case a barrel) off the screen.

Some of the material can be found at: http://www.computing.northampton.ac.uk/~scott/greenfoot_ex/sco1/default.htm

All opinions in this blog are the Author's and should not in any way be seen as reflecting the views of any organisation the Author has any association with. Twitter @scottturneruon

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Problem Solving Open educational Resource

Another new Open Education Resource (OER) has been made available by the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton. Problem-Solving Author: Dr Scott Turner http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 Details These mini lectures are intended for undergraduate computing students, for providing simple steps in problem solving before the students learn a programming language. Problem-Solving and Programming is a common first year undergraduate module on the BSc Computing Programme at the University of Northampton. This material was taken from the problem solving part of the module and provides an introduction to five topics in problem-solving. The resource can be found at: http://find.jorum.ac.uk/resources/19001 After one week on JORUM 93 downloads and 12 views of the OER.

Problem-solving or computational Thinking

Confession time, this has been a research interest for me, along with a number of colleagues, since around 2005. It started with undergraduate students - investigating teaching and developing problem solving skills as a first step in developing programming skills through the use of LEGO-based robots and graphics based programming for undergraduate students. The main vehicle then for developing the problem-solving skills was the LEGO RCX Mindstorms robotics kits and series of gradually more challenging robot-based tasks. Lawhead et al (2003) stated that robots “…provide entry level programming students with a physical model to visually demonstrate concepts” and “the most important benefit of using robots in teaching introductory courses is the focus provided on learning language independent, persistent truths about programming and programming techniques. Robots readily illustrate the idea of computation as interaction”. Synergies can be made with our wo...

Primary School with Computing Problem

A member of the School of Science and Technology helped a local primary school look at ways they could add some programming into some of their ICT lessons. The Greenfoot software ( http://www.greenfoot.org/overview ) and tutorials ( http://www.greenfoot.org/doc ) were used to demonstrate some possible ways this could be done. This type of activity is similar various people are trying around the country to persuade children that programming is fun and not as hard as some people may tell them (see Coding for kids is as easy as Pi for another example) This Greenfoot work forms part of the on-going out-reach activities the School of Science and Technology, University of Northampton is actively working in partnerships with schools. Other examples include: Junkbots Outreach during Science and Engineering Week 2012 Girls into Engineering summary BeSwitched On - Taster Day for computing Dancing robots For more details on any of these please contact Dr Scott ...

Problem-solving

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