The multi-purpose room at Healdsburg Junior High was abuzz Friday, as third graders and seventh graders huddled over robots and laptops. Some of the devices – the robots – actually buzzed.
Two long tables were filled with students bent over laptops. “We’re coding,” said seventh grader Carlos Gutierrez.
Gutierrez and third grader Giovanny Serrano were creating their own variation on Minecraft, a popular computer game that encourages experimentation.
According to third grade teacher Joanna Schrichfield, “It’s all coming from their imagination.”
Schrichfield, along with seventh grade science teacher Patricia Murphy, are using a curriculum that allows each class to create and learn on its own, and then come together to share. “The seventh graders have been working on engineering projects all year,” said Murphy. Gesturing at the groups of students working together, she added: “They’re engineering sidekicks for each other today.”
At the robotics event, in addition to the pairs writing code, groups of four students used a tablet computer to program a small robot to travel along a line and turn at a precise angle. The students handed the tablet back and forth between age groups to input commands into the tablets.
Another group worked with robots built from Lego parts, which followed tablet commands to roll about and gesture with movable appendages.
It all looked like fun, but what was the point? HJH assistant principal Erika McGuire explained that the exercise taught students to work and solve problems in groups, to adjust and try again when the robots did not move as predicted and to gain skills working with machines. “And, it’s fun,” she smiled.
