When we first looked at the mBot we thought it was cute and our students would love it’s look and feel.  The robot is solid, it feels like it could take a lickin' and keep on tickin’!  The team loved the inherent motivation we felt this robot would bring; think the Scooby-Doo Dune Buggy turned into a modern codeable toy-sized device.  After we dived a little deeper into mBot and NextWave curriculum we saw correlations with New York State's Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards and then looked to see which areas we felt were adequately engendered.  Ultimately we had mixed thoughts; while some of us felt this would be a fine whole class program others thought it was better suited to center activities or a pull-out style enrichment program.  We all loved that this was a complete program, nothing extra needed to be purchased to go along with the activities and the robots (except batteries!).  Some of us felt that the lessons were highly adaptable and could be reconfigured to meet the needs of a large variety of learners, others thought it would be more difficult to change things adequately to meet the needs of our most able students. 

The mBot itself is very customizable!  The default is to set it up as a robot that looks like a smiley buggy, however; the mBot is compatible with LEGO which means it is INFINITELY customizable!  East Ramapo students in grades 5 and 6 use LEGO Spike Prime kits so they were eager to personalize their mBot.  This was a great way to add SEL to any of the lessons.  Students could add LEGO to their robot to show emotion or to add functionality to their robot.  

Another great trait of the NextWave lessons is that they can be ordered as you like.  The lessons are taught as clusters rather than as a sequence, this allows for teachers to customize their students’ experience of the program; some lessons can be left out.  Teachers in situations where they have a 40 minute period often find it difficult to fit in every lesson, some may require more than just the 40 minutes allowe, or more lessons/week than they are given.  Having a program where lessons are not taught in sequence and where every activity does not build on the next means that a lesson can be left out if a teacher finds it does not meet his needs.  We very much appreciated that we had the agency to adapt the lessons as we needed without losing the integrity of the program. 

John Dewey would love NextWave!  It’s all learning through doing.  The entire program is 100% hands-on. 

In addition to meeting many of the Computer Science and Digital Fluency standards we saw many ELA, Math, and Science standards are also met using this program as the clear scope and sequence made easily apparent.  We also really loved that this was a set of lessons that could be done with a large variety of student ages and abilities.  We felt that NextWave truly understands students and allows for adaptability, student creativity, discovery, and exploration which is exactly how we feel students should be taught!

We were able to pilot this program with students in gradees K-3 and grades 4-6; each group had a different device.  Students in the lower grades had a cute colorful mouse with intriguing buttons while the students in the intermediate grades had a challenging fun car-like robot to assemble and code.

The students in grades K-3 loved the mouse and as they explored the device the room filled with laughter and amazed happy faces; it was priceless!  After the initial explorations the students discussed what the buttons did as part of the first lesson.  They then  happily unplugged and color coded, for kids in K-1, and labeled for the guys in 2 and 3.  The coding activities were easy to use and organize for young learners.  The colors not only helped organize the code but also made the coding more enjoyable for the students.

While the assembly of the robots for kids in 4-6 was challenging the students all engaged with and enjoyed the challenge.  Our students have become accustomed to building and engineering together as they are challenged weekly to build and code with LEGO Spike Prime.  mBot is more challenging to build than LEGO as it uses a variety of screws and nuts, bolts and washers that LEGO does not.  Many students enjoyed the "realness" of the build and were eager to help others and find resources online to help explain the directions for assembly further and with  more detail.  It was great to see our kids taking the initiative to find solutions to challenges on their own.  This was also definitely a case of the teacher being a learner along with the students through the assembly and coding process.  The kids who already have an interest in mechanics and technical projects felt thrilled to have such a cool robot to assemble with screwdrivers and Allen wrenches.  It was easy to see why the students found the activities so engaging.  

Students then set out to code the mBots.  The version of blockly the students used was familiar to them as they have used similar code with Scratch, Code.org, LEGO Spike Prime, Code Monkey, and Learning.com.  Students found the coding challenging, engaging, and fun.  They liked commanding the mBot through a variety of activities.  

The resources were mostly easy to use, there is some room for improvement.  The directions for assembling the mBot could have been more explicit, had more illustrations, larger text, and more lablels, however; a quick Google search resulted in finding all of those scaffolds and some videos of others assembling the mBots.  

Teachers and students both enjoyed the experience of Discovery of Robots.  It was a fun diversion from our everyday.  We are divided on how we would continue using the resource but all felt it was worthy of use and that it was best left up to each institution to decide whether and how best to use NextWave.  Could it be an enrichment pull out style activity--Sure!  Could you do it as a Computer Science unit--Yep!  Could you find enough to do with it for a year's worth of activities, 5 days/week?  We don't think so.  Would it be something to use to completely teach all of the Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards?  No, more than just Discovery of Robotics would need to be used but it would be a very enjoyable part of a full CSDF program.

Some of the challenges that came up were :

• The parts of the mBot were not labeled inside of the box. This made it difficult for students to be able to identify the correct screws, and parts to build the mBot. 

  • • To overcome this, we pulled out the necessary pieces ahead of time and labeled them for student use prior to teaching the building lesson.

• The directions were not student friendly and were in very small print. A multilingual option could be added to make it easier for students. Directions could also be presented online in various formats to adapt for students with disabilities.  The directions and pictures of the mbot could have been from multiple angles to help guide students (and teachers) through the process. This would have helped us have clarity that we had constructed the mBot correctly.

  • • To deal with this we added our own version of the directions for ease and found appropriate videos to accompany the building experience.

    • Support videos to accompany the directions could be added to the website so that they could guide students who are currently unable to read and those who need additional support to construct the mBot.

• Being that there are many parts to the mBot that can be used at different times, having a closed compartment or compartments with the ability to be closed and reused in the box would be helpful. 

  • • To deal with this we used lots of Ziplock bags.

• Batteries are not included and for a large class that is a large extra expense. 

  • • We purchased our own batteries for this.

There were little to no challenges with the technology.

We did need to supplement the curriculum a bit with translated worksheets and some scaffolded materials for our ELL population and students with disabilities.

This program would be better suited to small groups and used as an enrichment program to be added to an existing STEM program.  We could see this as a station that students could use in a regular classroom situation more than I can see it being used for whole group instruction or in a computer science whole class pull out situation.  Students would benefit more from an 8-12:1 student/teacher ratio.  We could see this also being used where older students mentor younger students through assembly and coding challenges.

We would recommend this as an enrichment type program to do with a small group of students.  I'm not sure about the practicalities for whole class instruction or as a pull out whole class program.  It would be very difficult to assemble the robots in a 40 minute time block in a Computer Science classroom with 30 students. We  would suggest taking the time to label the pieces yourself BEFORE beginning to build. 

We feel that this program is better suited to the upper elementary classrooms. Building the robot in grades lower than 4th would be extremely difficult without background knowledge that the program doesn't provide.  The younger students lack the dexterity to be able to manipulate the small screws and bolts to put the mBot together.

Possible artifacts:

• Lesson plans

• Supplemental resources

• Videos of students engaged in lesson (you probably need a release for this)

• Data

• Video of you talking about your experiences.

Lesson Plans

Coding Site - to be used if you are unable to have the program added to your classroom computer/Chromebook

FROM NEXTWAVE:

K-2 Videos  

3-5 Videos 

K-8 Robotics Resource

K-2 Presentation

3-5 Presentation