Your Stories - Golden Beach State School

Tracy Sleeman, Technology Ambassador and Teacher at Golden Beach State School borrowed an Ozobot Kit from CSER this term and took her students on numerous adventures as they learned about computational thinking, coding and creating!

At the beginning of Term Four a box of goodies arrived at Golden Beach State School. Eighteen tiny Ozobots – colour sensing robots on loan from the Adelaide University CSER Lending Library. These have been put to use during Technology Lessons in most year levels this term. After initial exploration of the tiny bots each class thoughtfully analysed the capabilities of the Ozobots. The students were encouraged to experiment with colour, colour codes, shapes, sequence, line direction, width and angles.

We created ‘Y’ charts to summarize – something learnt, what went well and what didn’t go so well. The students soon realised that these tiny bots will follow tracks of colour using the special Ozobot pens (although textas will do), but the lines need to be of a certain width. If the lines are too thin the Ozobots will not sense the colour and therefore will not follow the track. The colour codes need to be inserted carefully and also need to be of a certain width. The Ozobots also change colour to correspond with the colour of the tracks drawn. Some codes also seemed to work better than others. If the tracks were drawn too close together the Ozobots would also get a little confused and would jump tracks or start randomly spinning.

Using the ‘code sheets’ provided, the students experimented with changing the behaviour of the Ozobots by inserting various sequences of colour along the tracks they created. Some students also sent their tiny bots on a journey – changing the behaviour of the bot to tell a story. For example with the recent bush fires, we created scenarios – sending the Ozozbots on a journey – slowing down where there was thick smoke, speeding up to get past a potential grass fire and using the ‘U-Turn’ code to send the Ozobot home to rescue  their ‘pet’ from the potential fire.

Our Prep and Year One students were able to send the Ozobots on a journey connecting rhyming words. Using the tracks created by older year levels they happily watched as the behaviour of the Ozobot changed as it moved along the path connecting their chosen rhyming words.

Our Year Threes also spent time using their computational thinking skills to plan, predict, sequence, test and debug a series of dance sequences for the Ozobots – ready for our ‘Dance Off’ in subsequent lessons. Each group was challenged to add five cool moves to create a dance sequence for their tiny Ozobot friends.

Thank you Tracy for sharing your school's experience with Digital Technologies and the CSER Library. The CSER Lending Library is made possible with funding from the Australian Government Department of Education.