Surbiton High Junior Girls enjoy “Days of Wonder” - 08/06/2010

In order for the girls to experience programming first hand, each Year 5 and 6 class had a session with a company called "Days of Wonder" on Thursday 27th May and Friday 28th May. They worked in groups of two or three and each group had access to a laptop and a Lego Robot. The girls didn't know what to expect and were very excited when they saw the robots. They quickly settled down and were taught the basic methods to enable them to begin instructing their robot. As the session progressed they learnt how to get the robot to move around a track and reverse into a parking space. Then they were introduced to the various sensors attached to each robot and were able to progress further in their programming skills. The session culminated with a demonstration of just how advanced the programming can be as the instructor set two robots to dance to the music. All the girls learnt a great deal but also had lots of fun in the process.
"They were called Lego Mindstorms NXT. We were all very impressed at the beginning when he told us they were worth about £250 each! First, we learned how to program the robots. We started by dragging and placing ‘move boxes' on a computer screen, then changing their settings to make the robots do what we wanted. By following the instructions we were given, we managed to make our robots move forwards and backwards and make their way around the track. It was really good fun working in the teams and it felt brilliant when you completed the task.
Then we came to my favourite part - using sensors. The robots had five sensors but we only used two. These were touch and sound. We programmed it so that it sent a sound wave out and when it bounced back, it would stop after it realised it was 40cm away from an object. This was a really fun program and we all found it hilarious when we jumped in front of them suddenly and they stopped!
In the time we were given, we also made our robots park like a car, display a message on their screen and we also saw two of them perform a dance routine the instructor made! All in all, it was an amazing experience and I would happily do it anytime again."

Stephanie Mitchell 6R