U6 Day 24-33: PD Discussion Topic
In my class we will be using a VEX system instead of Mindstorms.
Time to complete: two weeks.
For the final project, students will form groups of 3.
Each group will select one of three design goals:
Able to move the highest weight
Arm able to lift the highest weight
Fastest time to travel a specific distance
Students will then create a sketch of their intended design to be critiqued by the teacher and at least two other groups not attempting the same challenge.
Critiques will include, at minimum, three positive comments, three negative comments and at least one way to improve the design.
Students will then construct their robots.
Documentation of progress will be maintained in an engineering design journal with daily entries.
The engineering design journal will be formatted as follows:
Each group member’s goal for the day
Each group member’s accomplishment for the day
Any difficulties encountered along with possible solutions
During build phase: Daily pictures showing build progress
During programming phase: Daily screenshots of progress
Upon completion, we will have a class competition to test each of the three design goals.
Each of the winning teams will receive a free homework pass.
I really like the idea of the students sketching their intended design as well as being critiqued by the teacher and other student groups. For the journals, will the students be posting them online so that groups can see the progression of other groups?
I chose this topic because I only had robot kits for a week so I had to really be creative to get in as much as I could with the limited time.