How To Train Your Robot

#1

Post by joshontheweb » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 2:51 PM UTC

How To Train Your Robot
drtechniko.wordpress.com

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#2

Post by joshontheweb » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 3:25 PM UTC

Really love the idea of making the parents into Robots and letting them define their own functions like 'hug'

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#3

Post by SkyMarshal » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 4:05 PM UTC

Very clever. I'm also hoping Notch's 0x10c game will also be a good programming teaching tool for kids.

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#4

Post by taylorbuley » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 4:20 PM UTC

Reminds me of my first ever programming class -- http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/handouts/karel-the-robo...

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#5

Post by felixr » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 4:34 PM UTC

This reminds me of playing RoboRally (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally).

RoboRally is a board game where you have to program your robots next 5 steps with instruction cards (turn left/right, move, ...).

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#6

Post by GuiA » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 4:35 PM UTC

For the past 5 years or so, I've been spending my summers teaching kids how to program, build robots, make websites, videogames, etc.

I usually teach algorithms without using a computer as well. I put kids in groups, and give them a shuffled deck of cards. How can we sort it as fast as possible? Can they come up with their own techniques? Then we have little challenges to see which group sorts it the fastest, and they explain their "algorithm" to the others.

It's an intuitive way to introduce many concepts (including parallelism, yay) without using a computer. I think it's critical to show that this elegance in computing transcends the machine.

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#7

Post by gwright » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 5:05 PM UTC

taylorbuley wrote: post #4

Reminds me of my first ever programming class -- http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/handouts/karel-the-robo...

Memories... This was the first programming environment I learned in college (RIT in 1983).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_(programming_language)

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#8

Post by mikeriess » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 5:12 PM UTC

felixr wrote: post #5

This reminds me of playing RoboRally ( http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=ah/prod/roborally ). RoboRally is a board game where you have to program your robots next 5 steps with instruction cards (turn left/right, move, ...).

Lost mind of Dr. Brain anyone?

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#9

Post by tta » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 5:21 PM UTC

Coral Cache Mirror (with images): http://drtechniko.wordpress.com.nyud.net/2012/04/09/how-to-t...

Re: How To Train Your Robot

#10

Post by cocoflunchy » Sat, Apr 14, 2012, 5:22 PM UTC

Awesome ! Love that part : For some reason, kids loved making their parents repeat stuff 100 times over.

It's exactly the kind of thing I used to do when I first tried a programming language (printing random stuff 500 times already feels strangely empowering... not to mention email spamming scripts!). I guess it's one of the main purposes computers were made for.