On Tuesday the 14th of March, our TYs took part in a Mindstorm Lego Robotics workshop with Feargal and Francesca from Cork Learnit! The aim of this workshop was to build teamworking skills and, of course, learn some coding.
First, everyone got into groups, and began by constructing their robots; making the “frame” of the robot, attaching the “block” (the part that receives the code from the computer), the two wheels on either side, and then finally plugging it into the computer. The fact that all of the pieces were Lego and simply clicked together made it nice and easy to put together.
Next, on the floor, there were maze-like roads laid out, some harder and some easier to manoeuvre through. The task given to everyone was to code their robots to drive their way through the maze. Nobody had to code from the ground up, with everyone using block coding, a drag-and-drop format of coding which is very handy for beginners. Once they had the code written, they downloaded it onto their robots, and off they drove! The real task was to get them to drive the right distance and then turn the right angle repeatedly, because one minor mistake in the distance or angle would throw the whole thing off.
Some groups made it to the other side of their mazes, and some didn’t, but absolutely everyone tried and had fun! It was a really fun but educational activity to do, with everyone in the year now having a basic knowledge of block-coding. Thanks so much to Feargal and Francesca for the wonderful afternoon!