Coding and Robotics – Week 6

Quest Update – This week, the Eagles in the studio started working with LEGO robots!!!! It’s so exciting. At the beginning of the week the Eagles built the robot and then they started working on its coding through the activities in this link.

Quest Launch – Thursday’s launch was dedicated to the interesting discussion about robots that replace humans in a wide variety of jobs. I asked the Eagles whether robots replacing people at their workplace is good or bad. At first everyone said it was good, of course. Then I asked them for their opinions about a situation where a parking lot guard in his 40’s gets left without a job because a computer replaced him or a taxi drivers would be left without work when electric cars replace him. Here everyone changed their minds and said that they think that it is not good that robots would work instead of humans. We read together this article that brings some interesting arguments to think about on that subject.

P.E – On Tuesday, there was lovely weather outside. We decided to put P.E, lunch, free time, civilization and meditation together and go out with the Eagles to Verona Park for half a day. In the morning they worked on their core skills and then on their writer’s workshop, and then at noon we went to the park until 3pm. As you probably already understood from this blog, I believe that going out of the studio and dedicating time to play outside is as important an activity for the Eagles as learning math in front of a computer. Those three hours at the park were wonderful for all of us. To my great satisfaction, I even managed to lead a fairly successful civilization class outside. Only the meditation did not work for us because the grass was completely wet and the Eagles could not find a place to lie down so they could actually relax.

Morning Launch – This week I played “What this, what’s that” with the Eagles, invented by the talented Elad Segev, and it’s explained in this video. This was the first time I led this activity and I chose a kind of triangular object with two parts, originally used for making Korean sushi. One of the Eagles volunteered to feel the object and describe it, another Eagle picked it out according to the description and then we took out the object and everyone tried to guess what it was used for. In the end, I asked the Eagles to choose a subject that they would be interested in studying in the context of the uses that came up and present it to everyone next time. I think it has been successful, in general, and in any case, I strongly recommend this activity.

Next week is the last week of the session and of course, there will be a concluding exhibition!!!