Reflection

Using a Sphero, a kind of spherical programable robot, I created a creative way to promote our school. I made the small simple robot spell out our school initials. I did this because it was a fun and unique way to show support for our school, even though its quite a small example.

During this process, I learned a little about pixilated letters. As I will mention later, the Sphero cannot travel diagonally, which makes most letters really hard to make. I had to research some designs for letters that meet these standards in order to find real limits.

The 7 standards of the class are Empowered Learner, Digital Citizen, Knowledge Constructor, Innovative Designer, Computational Thinker, Creative Communicator, and Global Collaborator. My project most strongly ties to Empowered Learner. This would be because, during this project, I set goals and used innovative strategies to meet them.

A challenge I overcame on this project was getting the robot to go the direction I wanted it to. For some odd reason, the people who designed the coding for the Sphero decided not to add an option to make the robot travel diagonally. I was only able to overcome this problem by using unconventional pixel techniques to resemble the words I wanted it to.

Given a chance to do this again, I would change just the problem I just discussed. This flaw made it extremely difficult to make most letters. I was jut barely able to squeeze by this problem, and would definitely like to see a fix in the near future.

Hastings High School Career and Technical Education Program offers Agriculture, Business Management, Computer Programming, Construction Trades, Culinary Arts, Digital Multimedia, Engineering Design, Finance, Insurance, Marketing. My project connects most strongly to the Computer Programing CTE program at Hastings High School. This would be because, for this project, computer programing was all that I was doing. Similar techniques can be applied in careers like video game design, computer software design, AI design, and so much more.