[hammerhead_399]

Usually at our events where we are talking to middle school students, we start with ice breakers.

One activity you can do to teach the IDEA of programming is get a pair of safety glasses and spray paint them black(or find some way to remove vision from anyone wearing them), and set up an obstacle course for them. Keep it safe.

Get 2 volunteers, a programmer & a robot. Put the glasses on the robot volunteer. Have the programmer yell out commands to the robot(i.e. go forward, stop, turn 90 degrees to the left), and have the robot volunteer do ONLY what the programmer says.

You can use this activity to explain the relationship between writing code and operating the robot, like how the robot will only do the commands given by the programmer.

This can also be used to understand the ideas of sensors on a robot. We usually say something along the lines of, "The robot is being navigated through the course without all of it's senses. Vision is impaired, and taste & smell do not help. They are relying on touch and hearing only. They rely on what is in their environment to guide them, much like how we put sensors on the robot so it can understand the elements of it's environment." Then you could show some sensors and their uses, maybe.


Hope this helps!
-Gabe Ruiz