Setup and Start Your Quirkbot
Envision students engaging in creative learning, making robots meaningful to them.
Setup and Start Your Quirkbot
Envision how students engage in a creative learning process building robotic projects meaningful to them.
The Strawbees team is happy to welcome you to your new STEAM Classroom Robotics - micro:bit experience. We are excited to work together in getting you acclimated with Strawbees Classroom.
As teachers, you teach a variety of areas, such as knowledge, how to navigate social-emotional moments, and skills. You teach children reading and writing comprehension. Introduce them to history and how to draw conclusions from evidence after conducting an experiment. While you help them learn the value of teamwork and perseverance. Contributes to shaping young minds and helping them become critical thinkers, complex problem solvers and creators. But how does one go about teaching these?
Teaching children how to think for themselves is not easy, but it is necessary if we want our children to create the change the world needs. In this article, we present how we give you the resources to teach children how to think creatively, critically and solve problems like inventors do.
Creative Learning
Strawbees are not only a tool or about making things, it’s also the environment in which they are made. We want to create a learning environment that helps children engage in projects that reflect their ideas and how they see the world.
Inspired by the work at Lifelong Kindergarten at MIT Media Lab and Strawbees resources and materials are for helping teachers to facilitate situations where students can engage in creative thinking. Children continuously iterate their projects as they travel through the Creative Learning Spiral.
[1] Kindergarten learning approach for student projects to iterate through the Creative Learning Spiral coined by Mitch Resnick of Lifelong Kindergarten.
A classroom with Strawbees transforms into a dynamic and collaborative playground with opportunities for students to interact, experiment, and create overlapping projects. In this imaginative space of making and playing, children refine their creative thinking while building projects they care about. As they build, their process is reflected as the Creative Learning Spiral.
A pair makes a wearable idea catching machine in Sara Ebert's library.
With just a handful of connectors and a few straws or cardboard, there is plenty that can be built from a simple shape to compound machines. Use computers, hands, imagination. Recycle or upcycle anything they can get their hands on. Problems may be endless, but possibilities are infinite. Whether it’s an idea for an automatic food dispenser for your pet or to understand why it’s impossible to make a regular polygon out of regular hexagons, there is a tangible experience of ideation through figuring out complex and sometimes abstract ideas. If children dream it, they can build it.
Strawbees are a connector in more ways than one. We believe in developing creative confidence for your students to make sense of the world and solve new problems. It's important to know how to build, explore, test, and experiment because breakthroughs don't just happen. Learning by trying is the future.
Young students mapping out an urban city layout, fulfilling the needs of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in Rome, Italy led by Paola Mattioli.
Bridge designs have to carry loads over molten lava in Brian Jones' class taken place in California.
Sensing the World
Humans and animals rely on sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch to determine how to interact with their environment. When a human feels cold, they put on another layer of clothing. Animals listen for predators. Plants have stimuli for touch, which is different from what humans have. Like how a sunflower grows toward the sun. The question is, how do robots sense the world?
Since robots do not have natural senses like humans, they rely on sensors. A sensor is a device that can detect and respond to physical environment input. The robots can make decisions on how to engage their environment, but are unable to do so on their own. Meaning senses are created for them through sensor hardware such as a microphone to listen or a thermometer to feel hot or cold. When a robot is given instructions and guidelines by humans, it can ‘listen’ and ‘feel’ proactively.
The Quirkbot is a small computer with built-in LEDs and There are sensors like the light sensor that can . One thing you can do with a micro:bit is make a robot's senses interactive. To instruct a Quirkbot-controlled robot on how to use sensors, the instructions are translated through Strawbees CODE. You fit a combination of the block or flower categories when programming. The inputs, outputs, and processors are known as brains and are used for your robot to sense the world.
Robots begin with a simple sense (input), then collect and think about data (brain), and finally respond (output). Imagine a robot that can sense like an animal, plant or a new companion.
Living beings rely on all five senses to make decisions in complex situations. An animal uses taste and smell to identify plants for energy, while on alert listening and looking for predators. For an advanced interaction, you can program multiple inputs concurrently responding through a different output for the robot. The more information the robot can comprehend, the better it will navigate the world.
Get Hands-on
Now it’s time to try building and programming robots for yourself. Read and follow along the examples in these articles, entering a creative robotics adventure.
