My kinder students have seen the "big kids" using Dash in the library and they keep asking when they will get to play with it. I talked with the kidner teachers and we decided that during December's Hour of Code would be a good time to introduce Dash to the students. We had school for three weeks between our Thanksgiving and Winter breaks so I decided to do a progessive introduction for them. We started the first week using the Kodable app on the iPad.
The second time they came I introduced them to Dash and the Wonder Path app where students could make Dash follow a path they traced on the ipad with their fingers. They had such a blast with this.
The third week, we tried using the Wonder Blockly app. I showed them how they could use the words to make dash do different things and limited them to the Movement, Animation and Sound commands since most are nonreaders. This was by far the most challenging for them because of the words, but they still enjoyed it.They loved finding new noises and animations for Dash. Their favorite was the burping sound and the kissing animation.
I feel so far behind in my blogging. So much has been happening in the library this year and I have failed miserably at documenting it. One of the most exciting things is that we have some new robot-y items for our makerspace that the students are LOVING! (Disclaimer: I really had not played with any of these things in depth before putting them into the hands of students. I really have been saying "I have no idea how these things work, y'all will need to figure them out").
Wonder Dash and Dot: I have 6 of the Dash robots and we borrowed 3 of the Dots for a few weeks. The students love Dash because he has wheels and can move. Dot, we don't really understand yet. There are free apps by Wonder that can be downloaded to the ipads to code or control the Dashes. The students at first just want to drive them around and race them, but now they have moved on to coding it to make it do anything. We made some mazes using shower curtains from Dollar Tree and tape.
Even the teachers and principal love playing with Dash.
Sphero SPRK: Similar to Dash in that there are apps you can use to drive or code the sphero, but we had to do some troubleshooting for connectivity for these since they run on bluetooth. I have 4 and students would end up controlling someone else's until I labeled each SPRK with their "name" on the bottom with clear tape. The students like racing these and coding them around the mazes as well.
Cubelets: These are sets of different cubes each cube with a different function. When you put the cubes together something happens. We have been using the cards that come with the set to build so far.
Ozobots: Small robots that are coding from colored lines and dashes. Students have been trying to have the ozobots trace their names in cursive and have been designing tracks for them to run on.
All of these have been really fun additions to our makerspace area. I am excited to see what the students will do with them as the year goes on. Now if I could only find a way to keep them all charged.
