Is That a Cellphone in Science Class?
Published June 4, 2008 by Rick Biche
The phone rings. It is a picture from the athletic fields behind the school. Kids quickly look at the image, then refer to a desktop displaying an aerial view of the same location using Google Earth. After conferring for a few minutes a student texts PU TW SP. Shortly after a blindfolded student picks up a jar from a bucket on the edge of a field, twists and removes the lid. What??
Working with another 8th grade science class our students are attempting to model the types of communication barriers that occur when dealing with remotely operated vehicles. I got the idea from somewhere, (I wish I could remember, Jason Project maybe?). We added in cellphones and Google Earth to add technology to the challenge. And a challenge it is. Student groups are broken in two, half inside and half in a field well out of view. Student Robots are placed in the center of the field and must simply follow commands, sent as coded text messages. After executing a command, the student simply snaps a picture and sends it back. While inside, the team can rely only on the image sent to them and the images in Google Earth. The goal is to navigate to an assigned location and perform a task.
We have only just started; the kids are in the planning phases. While the opportunity to use their phones definitely has their interest levels up, the need for focused practice in communication skills is apparent. Its funny but to the kids, cell phones are so common to them that they assume this will be easy. Those groups who have begun testing out their strategies have found just the opposite. Watching them regroup and reorganize has been satisfying. I will try to post more on this project as we fine tune the implementation.
Filed under Educational Technology
Hi Rick,
This sounds like a great multi-discipline problem for the kids to solve. I’m looking forward to hearing more about it.
Shaun- communication, communication, communication…that is the lesson we are learning. In an ideal world the groups would be so good at communicating that we could do this collaboratively with other schools…Even just inside using skype or some form of IM.
Rick, what a neat activity. I like the fact the the students giving commands are at a distance and relying just on GE and photos from the site. Very cool.
[…] was the final challenge in our Remotely Operated Vehicle Challenge. After about a week of planning and practice the groups from our two classes had their final […]
Rick,
What a cool idea!!! It would be interesting if I get back to teaching physics if we could work together and tie in the robots and collaborate something.
Rebecca
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