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shakerbor role play
Inspired by games where randomness plays a role and that the children had described in earlier activities, we designed a "role-play activity" to investigate on a more detailed level how the program that controlled the shaker robot worked, and how different ways of steering the robot in random ways could be developed. The games that children had described were Memory, Yatzy, “Spin the bottle” and “bingo lotto”. The aim was to explore how features of some of these games could be made to control the robot.
We played two games:
Game based on "Spin the bottle"
Depending on where the bottle points, a 1 or a 0 is generated. The robot will move in a different direction, like with the marbles:
1 1: move forward
0 0: move back
1 0: move left
0 1: move right
The children played in teams with three in each team:
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One random number generator (to spinn the bottle)
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One translator (who translates the two last numbers to a direction)
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One controlling the robot (receives messages from translator, cards with direction)
The robot should follow a "steeple chase course" like in the activity where children played with the shaker without marbles, but since it was too difficult to get the robot to move as you wanted the goal was now to be the quickest in taking down the first tower (it took 7.50 minutes for the first group and 10 minutes for the other).
Game based on Memory
We had cards with the numbers 1 and 0 (30 of each) that we spread across the table. A child should pick two cards, and depending on the numbers of the two cards and the sequence in which they were picked, the robot should be moved in a different way (as described above). If two cards were identical (and the robot moved forward or back) the two cards were taken away from the game, otherwise the cards stayed on the table and you could remember them for later use. The children played in two teams, and the goal was to get the robot to "your side" of the play area (two lego towers). Hence half of the players wanted the robot to move in one direction, the other half in the other direction.
The children played for half an hour, and it was interesting to see how the game evolved depending on if you knew/did not know what was on the cards.
We recorded the session on video and will add pictures soon.