As you walked by Creativity & Design Department Chair Mark Evans’ classroom this fall, you would have seen students deeply engaged–building with LEGOs™ at tables or cheering on classmates competing in a baseball video game on the big screen. While these activities looked fun, they also had a serious purpose: building critical skills in the new Robotics and Coding for Apps and Games courses.

 

Open to eighth and ninth grade students as a one-term elective, Robotics and Coding both launched this fall, meeting for a double and a single period per rotation. Both courses had a dual structure, combining a foundational survey course in the standalone classes with the opportunity to design and create an individual project in the extended periods. 

During single periods, Robotics students learned about the history of robotics, exploring cutting-edge applications for robotics technology, and developing an understanding of the necessary terminology and concepts. This discussion-based class time allowed Mark to mix in a dose of philosophy as the class discussed at what point robots should be considered human. In Coding, students learned the origins of coding, the different ways it touches our daily lives, and AI and coding ethics. They developed a familiarity with the building blocks of coding: loops, conditional statements, and function libraries. The class also engaged in a mini-debate, discussing whether AI should take over tasks like coding to free humans for more creative pursuits or whether humans still need to keep a hand on the steering wheel of the systems and processes that affect our daily lives. 

For the double periods, students adjourned to the back tables, engaging in deep work on individual projects that fit their level of experience. The LEGO™ MINDSTORMS robotics kits offered an easy entry point for students to build robots. For programming, students used the open-source platform, Open Roberta. Each student designed a robot to accomplish a particular task, from navigating a maze without hitting obstacles to more complex tasks, such as identifying objects based on color and shape, collecting them, and delivering them to a set location. To begin, students clarified their robot’s tasks so that they could identify the design components, like motors, sensors, and actuators. As students built their robots from the ground up, they encountered challenges that required troubleshooting, from coding glitches to motors that would only function properly if the robot was lighter. Most robots went through four to five design iterations during the term. 

Coding students used the various web browser games they had played as inspiration for their independent projects. Some students designed rhythm-based games requiring the user to take action, like swinging a bat at just the right moment to score. Others worked on puzzle and tactical strategy games. Students with little coding experience followed a game design outline with the additional challenge of making two or three hacks or tweaks to the game. Most students used Scratch 3.0, a visual coding language, and some students worked in Python. As with the robotics project, Mark encouraged Coding students to break their game down into the specific inputs, processes, and outputs that would make it work, understanding how they informed each other. 

Mark notes that one of the biggest challenges in coding is to keep track of all the moving parts and the logic flow. One student designed an asteroid dodging game where the player dodged erasers and pencils instead of space rocks. “The game has ten different variables and five different logic strings that are all happening at the same time,” says Mark. “If one of those logic strings or variables calls on something incorrectly or at the wrong time and it isn’t matched up on three different strings of code, it’s not going to work.” 

At times, students were frustrated when things didn’t work, but Mark emphasized the importance of patience and iteration. “In coding, we have to throw ego out the window, acknowledge that we didn’t get it right the first time, and figure out what needs to change.” The challenges encountered along the way made the moments of achievement and realization all the sweeter, as students who were hard at work could occasionally be heard exclaiming, “I’m cooking, Mr. Evans!”