RB - Robotify

Grow mathematical skills through coding virtual robots

Format: Online

Course duration: 20 hours

About the Course

Children find the world of robots fascinating. When you combine robots, computers and coding, then you have just tapped into an addictive formula for learning & mathematical skills building.

Welcome to the world of Robotify!

We are delighted to have partnered with Robotify, an exciting new and innovative Irish company, to bring you this course on a fantastic platform that allows children to code virtual robots.

Click on the video below to get a taste of what Robotify is all about.

Robotify provides a new online 3D coding environment where students can learn to code using block-based programming. Students can work independently through self-paced learning paths, or with teacher support and supervision.

Robotify is all online, it works in a web browser, be that in school or at home, with no download required.

There are hundreds of ready-made challenges for the students to engage and solve.

It is a virtual online world where they control the various robots through coding, for example:

In Axel’s Mars Adventure, students program their friendly robot companion, Axel, and help him/her complete a range of challenges disguised as mission briefings, all on planet Mars
In Srvo’s Drone Delivery Service, students control their own delivery drone, Srvo, in a new futuristic city, transporting and delivering the packages from A to B

The additional good news for teachers is that there are reams of great lesson plans and educator resources to support teaching children computational thinking and problem-solving through coding. The lesson plans and activities support children’s collaboration, thinking and learning away from the computer, in readiness to engage and complete various coding challenges when online.

Using the lesson plans associated with each activity, you can provide a more structured learning experience to your students, introducing and discussing key concepts before students put them into practice through coding in the Robotify environment.

In the programming challenges involving the control of virtual robots, students are encouraged to experiment and try different ways to solve the problems they are presented with.

Through immersive coding tasks and experiences, you, as the teacher, will acquire the knowledge, skills and insights to subsequently plan engaging mathematical skills-building activities for your own students and bring them onto the coding platform to apply, grow and strengthen their mathematical skills set through problem-solving real-life tasks in virtual environments.

So, come on teachers, join us this summer to acquire, practise and build up your own coding skills in preparation for bringing Robotify to your own school and into the mathematics curriculum.

REMEMBER: what rich soil, plentiful water and the summer sun are to plants, coding is to mathematical skills!

We await your arrival on planet Mars!

FREE TO ALL PARTICIPANTS: A 1-year licence to access the full Robotify platform

You will receive full access to all the Robotify features, challenges and lessons for 12 months. When your course is completed you can take your time to fully explore the wonderful virtual worlds that the Robotify robots inhabit and get a complete immersion into the powerful coding environments that build vital mathematical skills for students.

Code a virtual drone to fly in Drone Park

Code a Mars rover to perform many tasks in Axel's Mars Adventure

Enrol today and discover the world of virtual robots.

NOTE:

The on-line format of this course enables you to study at a time and place that best suits your own needs.

You can access your course anytime until February 28th 2023.

Within this highly interactive web based course, a dynamic learning experience awaits, where you can interact with your fellow course participants through the in-course chat forums and communication tools provided by the CPD College learning system.

Our friendly and knowledgeable tutors actively support each course, providing expert interaction, guidance and feedback for all participants on chat questions and assignments which call for critical reflection, self-analysis and a reasoned response.

On successful completion of your course, you can download and print off your CPD record and certificate of completion.

We look forward to welcoming you to your course.

Learning outcomes

In this course we aim to:

To propose and contextualise the essential place for a skills-building computer science coding programme within primary school
To demonstrate how such a coding programme can engage children in computational thinking and be used to effectively develop the mathematical skills of problem-solving, reasoning, communicating and expressing, integrating and connecting, implementing, understanding and recalling.
To plan a suite of learner experiences for children from third to Sixth Class that engage the children in exciting coding environments and tasks which provide the conditions to further develop their mathematical knowledge, skills and understandings
To provide the conditions, tasks and environment whereby the children are required to think creatively, reason systematically, work collaboratively, discuss, do error analysis, revise thinking and problem solve while completing assigned challenges
To design on-screen and off-screen tasks that help children to think like designers and programmers
To complete a wide range of incrementally more difficult tasks, acquiring the knowledge and skills to effectively plan a skills-based programme in coding through Robotify for their own students
To compile their own engaging pupil tasks and learning experiences that are mapped to mathematical curriculum expectations & skills development
To set up pupils individually on the Robotify learner management system (LMS), monitor progression of each student along the gated pathways and offer support where needed
To use the LMS to extend pupil on-task coding time through homework tasks, and to bring parents meaningfully into the coding world to support and champion learning
To compile rich STEAM projects around real-world issues to run in parallel with the coding in virtual environments

Modules

01 - Using Robotify to develop computational thinking:

Introduce participants to the Robotify platform
Contextualise and propose the case for developing mathematical and problem-solving skills, using a computational thinking approach, through immersion in Robotify coding challenges
Access, navigate and operate the key tools of the Robotify learning environment, platform and interface
Analyse problems and plan an approach to solving them e.g. move the robot in multiple directions on a 2D grid to carry out set tasks
Program the virtual robot to draw a number of regular 2D polygons
Program a virtual drone to fly prescribed pathways in a 3D environment
Provide lesson plans for all coding tasks

02 - Coding virtual robots to develop logic and reasoning:

Explain how coding develops the computational skills of logic and reasoning and their importance in solving problems
Teach programming concepts away from the computer as children role-play as robots and practice receiving and responding to a sequenced set of instructions
Practice making hypotheses about routes to solutions and testing them through programming the virtual robot to travel to defined target areas on a grid whilst avoiding obstacles
Code a virtual drone to fly at defined heights in multiple directions
Code a sequence of instructions using inputs and simple counting loops to have the robot complete tasks efficiently
Code a virtual drawing robot to draw multiple arrangements of concentric 2D shapes
Provide lesson plans for all coding tasks

03 - Develop pattern recognition through Robotify coding:

Explain how coding develops the computational skills of pattern recognition and abstraction and how it enables children to explore and describe patterns and structure
Demonstrate the process of ‘debugging’ through performing a simple review of their own code and stating a way in which it can be improved and describe how this can be applied to mathematics.
Align the coding tasks in the module to the following Strands and Strand units of the Primary Curriculum for Mathematics (Third to Sixth Class)
Incorporate turning angles into their programs
Explain the sense / compute/act loop and explore real-life examples with students
Program the virtual robot to ‘sense’ obstacles while retaining its movement capability.
Program the robot to draw a suite of interconnecting circles
Program a drone to land in a precise location e.g. at a particular house
Code a virtual robot to draw a suite of repeating shape patterns
Provide lesson plans for all coding tasks

04 - Understanding simple algorithms through coding in Robotify:

Teach and design an algorithm using a simple storyboard within Robotify and explore how coding helps to develop this skill in children
Create advance storyboard plans for programs that include loop structures which they then test and evaluate
Use two new computational thinking supporting design tools as part of their iterative design and problem-solving process
Program a drone to set its onboard camera at various angles while it is flying to find and photograph a number of target objects in the environment
Program a virtual robot to draw a 2D house with set dimensions and features
Provide lesson plans for all coding tasks

05 - A collaborative approach to problem solving, with Robotify:

Contextualise and explain how a collaborative approach to problem-solving through coding in Robotify, supports pupils’ reasoning, communicating, expressing and working effectively.
Program the Robotify Mars Rover with instructions, including the use of variables, lines, angles and coordinates
Create programs that use simple if-else statements to make decisions.
Program a virtual drawing robot to draw a suite of geometric pictures and tessellating floor patterns.
Create lessons in coding that take account of pupils' individual learning needs and design personalised interventions to overcome challenges
Code the drone with instructional sequences to pick up and deliver parcels to defined locations
Add students to the Robotify platform, manage their learning pathways and view the engagement analytics to assess individual progress
Provide lesson plans for all coding tasks

We are delighted to bring you this course in collaboration with Robotify, a real Irish success story and testament to what exposure to coding in school can do for children.

“I would like to thank everybody who has been involved in the facilitation of this course, it has, as always been superb. Very professionally run, superb resources and articles, as well as being easy to use. I do not look anywhere else when looking for a summer course because I know I will find exactly what I need with CPD College." - Rachael

RB - Robotify

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