Field Background
The project required students to become familiar with robots and so we began with several sessions that allowed them to investigate the current use of robots in our world today. Students were given websites to browse and encouraged to find more of their own.
The kits we used were Lego Mindstorms along with Robolab software. These kits provide ample lego pieces to build the ‘machine’ and the software is powerful and quite intuitive.

We all needed to have some experience with programming and so sessions were booked for each class with Macquarie ICT and a mentor employed to assist in the early stages with increasing teacher and student skills acquisition.
Learning to program at Macquarie ICT
Since we had 90 children involved, organization was crucial. Each group needed access to a computer and sessions were run concurrently in the S&T session each week. This often meant that groups were scattered around the school at various computer pods as well as in the library where the main computer lab is located.

Both the class teacher and the RFF teacher were at the sessions to allow the teachers to move around the groups, discussing, questioning, observing and

occasionally assisting with programming. Each session finished with a whole group discussion and sharing time, and five minutes to make notes in their journal.

It was intended that student teachers from UTS be involved each week to interact with the students and provide an additional mentor role.
Groups building and programming 1