At the end of last academic year Oakington joined the ‘Future Box’ project, which is a collaboration between designer/technologist Stef Lewandowski, founder of Makeshift and primary school teacher Gavin Summerfield from Heber Primary School in East Dulwich, London.
The aim of the project is to create a prototype a inspirational box for schools that contains amazing gadgets, kits and tools to inspire children to learn about how technology works. All as part of the Computing curriculum. Oakington was keen to explore this knowing how keen pupils and staff were in ‘new technologies’.
Since September Ms Vanderpuye and her Coding Club have been trialling Makey Makey and Ozobots. The club have been amazed at how they have been able to use these seemingly ‘simple’ technologies to program and to create simple codes in the first instance and more complex ones as they have made more discoveries about the two technologies.
The ‘fun’ thing about Makey Makeys has been in creating a piano keyboard with bananas and other everyday items or playing bongo drums with a school tie. How does that work?, asked one of the children. They soon found the answer when they related what they knew about electricity, conductors, insulators and circuits. As long as they were ‘earthed/grounded’ they could make most things work with the Makey Makey.
When the Ozobots arrived the Coding Club kids couldn’t wait to get them out of the box. Ms Vanderpuye hid one in her hand before gathering all the children around a pod to get them guessing what was in her hand. Given that the club had been discussing what might go in our ‘Future Box’, it didn’t take long for children to guess that it was an Ozobot in Ms V’s hand.
What does an Ozobot do? Well, this clever little robot uses colour codes (red, blue, green and black )to follow instructions to turn left, right, move forward, speed, up, slow down etc. and placing various colour combinations on a line you can make Ozobot do lots of fancy things. We have only recently started working with Ozobots so we are still exploring. You can draw you own mazes and paths for Ozobot to follow. As it follows the line Ozobot flashes the colour it has tracked.
We now have Nao robots, Makey Makey and Ozobots in our Furture Box. What would you have in your ‘Future Box’?
Oakington Manor Primary School 