STEAM

STEAM News

Have you come across a Robot today? Chances are you’ve probably interacted with one, used something that was built by one or watched one working. Robots are a larger part of our lives than we probably realise. If you’ve used “Hey Siri”, “Hey Google” or “Alexa” then you’ve used a form of robot. Although it may not be a physical robot, they behave like robots.

 

Our STEAM focus this term is on Robotics and how we use them in our world, how they affect our lives and how they function. Some discussions have included questions like “can robots think”, “could we live without them”, “why are they used in place of humans” and many other interesting thought provoking ideas.

During my time in our grade 3-6 classes we have been busy building Lego Robots and then coding them to perform different functions. The building process requires students to work together in pairs, sharing the work and helping each other. They are using lots of maths, engineering, knowledge of shapes and many other skills to build the robots.

 

In our lower year levels we focus more on designing a robot to perform a task. They then have a chance to become engineers with basic Lego, designing and building different structures.

 

The process we are working through with our students is the “Define, Design and Develop” process. When completing STEAM activities we are following this framework to guide our students through activities. This is simplified somewhat for our younger students but the framework remains the same. Our aim is to have students working their way through STEAM tasks using this framework as their guide.

Aaron Coulter

Learning Specialist - Stem