RoboGarden’s
free journey is built around a virtual Christmas celebration. Every year at Christmastime, a special lake becomes enchanted and the town’s people find beautiful ornaments that have magically appeared on its frozen surface. Picking ornaments up off the lake’s surface is a dangerous adventure. Robo decides to help the townspeople collect the enchanted ornaments to decorate the town’s Christmas tree. He will need you to guide him since the icy lake can be treacherous. Help Robo skate across the frozen surface to safely collect the ornaments.
While Robo is learning important life lessons, the student will be introduced to simple movements and the color sensor, which Robo uses to detect the color of each cell he skates across. The student will also learn how to use conditional statements and loops. At the end of the journey, the student will learn how to use loops to repeat the same action, how to use conditions to make decisions based on each mission's targets, and when to use nested conditions inside loops.
Students gain a lot of new knowledge as they work through RoboGarden journeys. To a child, they have played a fun game for a couple of hours, learned a lot about commanding and programming a robot, and become more comfortable mastering the use of the color sensor, conditions, loops, and nested loops. Meanwhile, a very important engineering concept is covered without the student ever realizing it.
We have mentioned that RoboGarden’s programs incorporate NGSS standards. In this case, the MS-ETS1 standard helps a child define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions. Engineering design and the MS-LS2-5 standard help the student evaluate competing design solutions while maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Overall, students are expected to improve in the areas of creativity, innovation, critical thinking, problem solving, and decision making.
