The children in the Senior Room began exploring their Vex IQ robotic kits. The classroom activities began with an introduction the, including the components and building instructions. Guided instruction equipped students with the foundational knowledge required to assemble the robots. They learned about the different parts, their functionalities, and how to connect them to create functional robots.
The children in Cappabue N.S. have been fostering their robotics and engineering skills using the EV3 robotics system. These kits provided students with hands-on experiences in coding, building, and controlling their own robots.
The children Togher N.S. have been learning about Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing. We are delighted to announce that the school won the Best Design Category in a nationwide 3D Printing Sustainability Challenge. The judging panel was from i-Form based in U.C.D. and Stryker. The school has won a €1000 voucher and the children will be presented with individual prizes. 3D printing and CAD have been a wonderful addition to the school and has allowed Togher N.S. to further extend the technical and artistic skills of our pupils. We hope you enjoy our winning video.
The children in Togher N.S. have enjoyed exploring their Vex IQ Robotics kits. Please watch their video here.
The Bee-Bot’s child friendly layout is a perfect starting point for children to learn about control, directional language and programming.
To understand what algorithms are, how they are implemented as programs on digital devices, and that programs execute by following precise and unambiguous instructions.
To create and debug simple programs.
To use logical reasoning to predict the behaviour of simple programs.
To design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals, including controlling or simulating physical systems; solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts.
We are delighted with our new Photon Robots. Our School Excellence – Digital cluster has received the first of these robots to Ireland. Logical thinking ability is becoming an increasingly important skill and we know that children love to learn by experimenting. Photon gives children programming related challenges that allow them to develop their logical thinking ability while having great fun.
We really enjoy celebrating International Dot Day here in West Cork. This year the children created a film which incorporates live action and animation using Scratch Coding.
As the world grows more technologically complex, computer science and computational thinking are becoming even more crucial fundamentals for students to learn. Since you can physically see the results of your coding exercises, robots offer a uniquely engaging format for learning these concepts. By its nature, the study of robotics inherently incorporates all four pillars of STEM while also encouraging teamwork, problem solving, and leadership for our students
There’s a lot of learning theory that says that experiential learning is very beneficial to children as it gives them concrete experiences to connect with the more abstract, theoretical STEM concepts. Making attempts that don’t work—and figuring out why they didn’t—is a crucial part of the learning process. When children are learning through testing and troubleshooting, they’re developing a sense of confidence that it’s OK if it doesn’t work the first time.
One of the main features of robots and coding is the collaboration between the children – watch the video below and imagine the conversations. “How did you do that?” “How do I fix this?” “Look at this” “If you change that around it might work” “you need to put in a decimal point there”. All the children are engaged with their learning and collaborating with each other
The children at Drinagh N.S. have been busy working with their new robotics kits.
We were delighted to start exploring our latest robotic and coding kits – EV3 Mindstorms. The older children have started building Sumo Bots using their EV3 robotics kits. There is quite a bit of research involved in both the design and coding of a Sumo Bot. Each Sumo Bot is coded before competition – they are not remote controlled. The first challenge was to code the Sumo Bots to recognise the boundary line of the arena – using a colour sensor, reverse away from it and change direction. The next step will be to code our Sumo Bots to seek an opponent, using a motion sensor and to drive towards that opponent. The children are having great fun working on different coding ideas and robot designs to create the ultimate Sumo Bot.
