Added a traffic light project to the grade seven Coding and Robotics course. As I learn, I need to make the Coding and Robotics more integrated than I did the first time I taught it. Use the robotics possibilities to add a physical dimension to what I teach. My first trial was with the Morse Code project where I used LED’s to display the code while teaching a more procedural way of looking at coding blocks. My second is with the Traffic Light project where I plan on integrating the LED’s with a physical model. Students will research to find out more about traffic lights, create scale sketches and then go through the design cycle as they move, back and forth, from cardboard to a 3-D printed model.
After reading a number of posts about teaching event base programming I applied part of what I read to this project. So in terms of coding, I am looking at teaching more about Boolean operators, multiple if blocks and more blocks. As the time of day and the day of the week will impact traffic flow they will need to create ways where they can make changes to the duration time of a light based on this. This will bring in boolean operators that check time and date then alter variables.
This link (iBooks) will take you to my first draft of the project.