Hey Habr! For several years, the LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 learning set and the Scratch children's language have evolved in parallel, but at the beginning of this year, Scratch added support for physical objects, including LEGO Education modules. We will talk about how this link can be used to teach robotics and what it gives students and teachers in this article.
The main goal of studying robotics and programming is not only and not so much teaching designing and coding, but the formation of universal skills. First of all, project thinking, which was practically not given attention in schools in the 1990s and 2000s, but which is being actively developed in all school disciplines today. Statement of the problem, hypotheses, step-by-step planning, conducting experiments, analysis - almost any modern profession is built on this, however, it is difficult to develop them within the framework of standard school subjects, in which the proportion of “cramming” is very high.
Robotics facilitates the assimilation of other school subjects by visually demonstrating physical laws in action. So, primary school teacher Yulia Poniatovskaya us how her students assembled the first model - a tadpole without limbs, wrote a program to move it and launched it. When the tadpole did not move, the children rushed to look for technical problems, but in the end they came to the conclusion that the reason was not in the code and not in the assembly, but that the way the tadpole was moved was not suitable for sushi.
To achieve this visibility and make it easier for children to work, the software in the training kits is a simplified version of the software for design. But they are not suitable for teaching the basics of programming. This shortcoming can be corrected by working with LEGO Education sets with third-party software: WeDo 2.0 can be programmed using the Scratch educational language.
LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 Native Features
The LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 Core Set is designed for kids ages 7-10. It includes: Smart Hub WeDo 2.0, electric motor, motion and tilt sensors, LEGO Education pieces, trays and stickers for sorting parts, WeDo 2.0 software, teacher's guide and instructions for building basic models.
For each of the models, we have prescribed what concepts from different sciences they explain. For example, using the "Player", it is convenient to explain to children the nature of sound and what is the force of friction, and using the "Dancing Robot" - the mechanics of movements. Problems can vary, be created on the fly by the educator, and have multiple solutions to help children improve their skills in finding cause and effect relationships.
In addition to robotics classes and explanations of physical laws, the set can be used for programming, because writing code that “revives” physical objects is much more interesting than creating something virtual.
LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 set software or Scratch
WeDo 2.0 uses LabVIEW technologies from National Instruments, the interface consists only of multi-colored icons with pictures, which, using drag-and-drop, line up in a linear sequence.
Using this software, children learn to build sequential chains of actions - but still this is far from real programming, and the transition to "standard" languages in the future can cause great difficulties. With WeDo 2.0, it is convenient to start learning to code, but for more complex tasks, its capabilities are no longer enough.
This is where Scratch comes to the rescue - a visual programming language that is aimed at students aged 7-10. Programs written in Scratch consist of multi-colored graphic blocks with which you can control graphic objects (sprites).
By setting different values and linking blocks together, you can create games, animations and cartoons. Scratch allows you to learn the concepts of structured, object-oriented and event-oriented programming, introduces you to loops, variables and logical expressions.
Scratch is slightly more difficult to learn, but much closer to text-based programming languages than WeDo's own software, since it follows the classic hierarchy of text-based languages (the program is read from top to bottom), and also requires indentation when using various statements (while, if ... else and etc). It is also important that the text of the command is displayed on the program block, and if we remove the “colorfulness”, we will get a code that is almost no different from classical languages. Therefore, it will be much easier for a child to switch from Scratch to "adult" languages.
For a long time, commands written in Scratch only allowed working with virtual objects, but in January 2019, version 3.0 was released, which supports physical objects (including LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 modules) using the Scratch Link application. Now you can interact with the same games and cartoons using motors and sensors.
Unlike its own WeDo 2.0 software, Scratch has more options: only one custom sound can be built into the base software, it does not allow you to create your own procedures and functions (that is, combine commands into one block), and Scratch does not have such restrictions. This gives more freedom and opportunities to both the students and the teacher.
Learning with LEGO Education WeDo 2.0
A standard lesson includes a discussion of the problem, design, programming and reflection.
You can indicate the task with the help of an animated presentation, which is included in the kit of materials. The children then have to make hypotheses about how the mechanism works.
At the second stage, the children are directly involved in assembling the LEGO robot. As a rule, students work in pairs, but individual or group work is possible. There are detailed instructions for each of the 16 step-by-step projects. And 8 more open projects give complete freedom of creativity when choosing a solution to the problem.
At the programming stage, you need to consider that it is better to start with your own WeDo 2.0 software. When the children master it and learn how to work with blocks and models, you can logically switch to Scratch.
At the last stage, there is an analysis of what has been done, the construction of tables and graphs, and experiments are carried out. At this stage, you can give the task of finalizing the model or improving the mechanical or software part.
Useful materials
- by LEGO WeDo 2.0 for teachers
- by LEGO WeDo 2.0
- Official Scratch
- Expansion to work with physical objects (including WeDo 2.0) in Scratch
- We Do 2.0.
- 11 lessons using LEGO Education WeDo 2.0 sets
- for assembling WeDo 2.0 models
Source: habr.com