The 5th graders were excited to do some programming with our newly-donated Sphero and our Dash robots this week. They also read and discussed some more of The Giver, and brainstormed problems in the world around us.  For this week’s blog post, we tried something a bit different.  I gave them question stems from Blooms Taxonomy that they could choose from to reflect.  Here are some of their wonderful responses.

Katie C. – Today’s lesson about Dash and Sphero makes me wonder what would happen if the companies of sphero and Dash worked together. They could create a robot that has something unique to each company, but would work smoothly. You know that saying “ Great minds think alike?” Well, great minds also think very differently, and that’s good. This robot could have a fun name like “Dero.” Maybe the robot would look like a Sphero, but a bit bigger. It could talk and make noises. I like the scroll quest idea and Sphero’s story line, so just imagine what the creators could do! I also wonder about what made the head of each company create the robots in the first place. Was it for fun at first but became something more? Or were they making it for kids so that they could learn? Whatever the case, I enjoy each creation. Now that I think about it, what if Osmo joined the fun? There are so many possibilities!

Odin – Learning about what we thought was wrong in the world reminded me of how for some people one thing can be pure evil, while for others it can be awesome. I thought of this because I was disagreeing with someone in my group and that got me thinking how their mind works differently than mine. I starting wondering what the difference is between peoples thoughts. I also wondered if some people base their thinking on others and just go along with their ideas. If so then why do people lend their thoughts to the group of what everyone is thinking. Also I thought from reading The Giver why people are afraid to do what is against reality. Why don’t people just feel no fear and do whatever they want. I think they don’t do it because it is extremely difficult to relieve yourself from all fear of consequences. Also another reason why nobody does whatever they want might be because they are worried that society would fall, or that people they love for would die. I believe that not caring about others is one of the most difficult parts of relieving yourself from restrictions. Another reason people may not do whatever they want is because they are afraid that they will be stopped and then punished.

Nathan – I think people learning some about programing at least a little in some way is important to help evolve the universe with more discoveries and inventions for further generations.After today I can prove,that it takes time to program with the fact that today we programed and the harder it gets the more difficult it gets.From what I learned about programing today I can infer that it is tons harder to program a robot to react to others programming.That is why Bill Gates is so famous he advances the world at so many different levels.I think without programing this huge world would be alot dfferent then what it is like now,I give a big thankyou to all inventors helping to improve and advance this tremendous ,amazing world.