This year for our robotics clubs we decided to change things up a little bit. Coaching FIRST Lego League, we have four aspects of our competition to prepare for:
#1. A research project
#2. A LEGO robot we build and program
#3. The performance of said LEGO robot on a game field
#4. Our teamwork
Typically the season starts in September and runs through the middle of November. Halfway through we host a scrimmage and invite other teams. We mostly run it to show our students they need to get cracking and quit slacking or else they're not going to do well in the competition come November.
The problem we've been encountering in the past is that nobody wants to work on the research project and everybody wants to play with the robot and the LEGOs. 10 middle school kids and nobody wants to do research- surprise? I thought not.
This year, instead, we decided to dedicate ALL of September to the project. Exclusively. No robot. No LEGOs until October. All of the team members would just research, brainstorm, consult experts, and work diligently on that year's research problem. I feared we might get burn-out and kids might stop coming, but the students have actually been doing an awesome job. My team watched the movie Food Inc (well, most of it anyway, I fast forward through some of the slaughter house stuff) to learn more about the Food Industry. The year's theme is Food Factor. My team has decided to reconfigure how they set up feedlots for cattle and they want to feed the cattle GRASS instead of CORN because cattle are supposed to eat grass! The whole problem with corn vs. grass is the e-coli the cattle produce as a result.
So, in one short month my team has gotten some really good, deep information (better than any previous years), has developed an awesome solution, and is well on their way to doing a great job for the project. Now we have time to dedicate more resources to our robot and hopefully have an awesome season.
Definition of insanity - continue doing the same thing and expect different results. We changed this year how we run things, hopefully we'll have different and better results. :)
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It is nice to hear that you have reflected on the past and decided to make a change. I am reading Project Based Learning, and it focuses on a driving question to jump start the project and inspire the children to ask questions. This, of course, leads them to the research. You can find more about it at bie.org.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like your change is making a difference in your robotics team this year. I hope you will post at the end how your students do in the competition and if you think this change made any difference in the final outcome.
ReplyDeleteI think often as teachers we get into a routine that we think is working and forget to reflect at the end of an activity so that we can make improvements for the next group of students.