I had been eyeing the Dash and Dot Robots by Wonder Workshop for quite a while but had not been able to purchase any for our school yet. One of our district Tech Coaches so graciously allowed us to borrow her set so that we could compete in the Wonder League's Robotic Competition. I chose a team of 5 students based on recommendations from our Instructional Coaches. The kids were so excited when I told them why they had been called to the library! One of the boys said, "Ms. Bishop, I am so excited you picked me! This is the first step for me to become an engineer!" Y'all, I could have cried right there! Dash and Dot have 5 apps available through the Itunes App Store. There is an app for every age group! My kindergartners picked up Go and Xylo very quickly and enjoyed "driving" Dash and programming him to play music on the attachable xylophone! The older kids picked up Blockly and Path pretty quickly as well. Blockly is a great app for beginning lessons on coding. The kids can see how the codes fit together and build on each other to program Dash's movements, sounds, and appearance. I would love to have had more time to work with Blockly! 2nd Graders figuring out the Go App! Name that Tune with the Xylo App! The Robotics Team used the Wonder app for participating in the competition. It is by far the more complicated of the available apps but the team learned quickly using the training exercises provided in the app. They caught on much faster than I did! And if I'm being honest, I still don't completely have it all figured out. But the good news is that the competition was for the kids and not me! :) Unfortunately we got started in the competition late, the Book Fair was set up on top of our grid (OOPS) and we had to return Dash and Dot before we completed all of the missions. I hate that the kids didn't get to finish what they started but they learned so much in what we did get to accomplish! Not only did they learn about programming but they also had to apply many different math concepts to each scenario we worked through. They had to measure, add, subtract, and multiply in order to complete the missions. They also learned to work together! This was huge. The first few days there was some pushing and pulling over who was "in charge" and coming to me when they couldn't figure out how to do something within the app. After a few days of me guiding them through working as a team and with the app they began to figure out the strength of each team member and work together to get to the finish line. Working on the first mission: I see so many possibilities for how Dash and Dot can be used throughout the school with different grade levels and across content areas. A second grade teacher and I have already discussed some super fun ideas on using them with her class! I am hoping to find some funding through grants this year so that I can purchase a couple sets of Dash and Dot and all of their fun accessories for our school!
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AuthorI am an elementary educator in Birmingham, AL. I have previously taught preschool, kindergarten, and first grade. I now have the BEST job as an elementary school librarian or "The Library Lady" as I'm called by the kindergartners! Archives
March 2017
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