Problem-solving

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 ...

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 p...