{"id":10286,"date":"2015-05-21T11:58:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T01:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/legoeng.local\/?p=10286"},"modified":"2016-02-10T09:46:17","modified_gmt":"2016-02-09T22:46:17","slug":"a-week-in-the-life-3-wave-goodbye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/legoeng.local\/a-week-in-the-life-3-wave-goodbye\/","title":{"rendered":"A Week in the Life #3: Wave Goodbye"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the fourth of probably fourteen posts, each chronicling in detail the ins and outs of my Robotics class. I teach an introductory course using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set. My students are 7th graders who are required to take the course and may not necessarily have any background in programming\/building. My school is on a trimester schedule so the course runs for thirteen weeks at a time. For this particular trimester I have one class of twenty-four students and one class of thirty-four students. I meet each class for one 50-minute period each day, five days a week. I have thirty-four computers in my classroom and one EV3 kit for every two students. I\u2019ve been teaching this class in its current form for two years, though I\u2019ve been teaching Robotics for eight all together.<\/em><\/p>\n

Hi. When I left you last week<\/a> my classes had started doing the Wave. Period 3 (the smaller class) had progressed further than period 4. But they both got it done this week with some time to spare.<\/p>\n

This post will illustrate the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat on a small scale as it plays out. So many times the students think they are close only to realize one robot throws off the entire group – for a variety of reasons.<\/p>\n

Here’s a few great examples:<\/p>\n

Period 3 started their robots out first thing on Monday expecting to be close to done (as they were on Friday) only to realize they were a bit further away than they recalled.<\/p>\n