Junior Botball

My colleague and I are in our second year of offering Junior Botball after school for students. Last year, we received a grant through the Idaho STEM Action Center that provided training and robots. We started working with students back in September. We have several 3rd grade students, one 5th grade, and two 6th grade. We have only four girls out of the 16 students participating.

This year, we had students stay for two hours after school on one day rather than doing two days a week for an hour after school.  It makes for long days for the teachers and students, but the students are able to complete more programming with less setup and cleanup time. 

We will wrap up the learning process on December 4 with a culminating challenge. Emmett Middle School will be joining us with their students who are participating in Junior Botball. We will have pizza and water for attendees and celebrate all the students' hard work.

In late January or early February, we will start up again with students that are ready to commit to making plans for GCER in the summer of 2018. We will work to further develop students' programming skills and begin fund raising to help with the cost of the trip.

I would recommend Junior Botball for any student. It is amazing what students can do while coding in C++. They really begin to understand the importance of spelling, formatting, critical thinking, and problem solving. It is so much fun to be a part of and watch the growth.

Junior Botball Challenge Training

I attended the Junior Botball Challenge Training in Boise with a colleague yesterday.  We were attending this training as part of a grant through the Idaho STEM Action Center (https://stem.idaho.gov/).  The grant covered our time and travel to the training, seven robotics kits, seven sets of mats, and the curriculum resources for students to learn C programming while completing robotics challenges.  I had no previous knowledge of the Junior Botball Challenge but was thoroughly impressed by the robotics kits and the learning goals for the students.  In addition, the ease of use as an educator with the program and the robot itself was great for beginners but also could challenge more experienced users.

 

 

During the first part of the training, we built our first robot.  The intention of the Junior Botball Challenge (https://www.juniorbotballchallenge.org/) is to focus on students learning to program using C language and receiving the immediate feedback from the hands-on use of a robot.  While we built our robot, students will typically only by using pre-built robots and add on parts to perform the necessary task for various challenges.  Two things struck me about the program.  I like both the emphasis on programming and using C language instead of a drag and drop (GUI) interface.

   

I look forward to getting started with students, which will be after the next five robots are built.