By meadowlakeNOW

MLTC students learn computer programming for robotics

Jan 29, 2018 | 5:47 PM

They started the morning finding out what coding was, and soon after, several students were learning how to make their own robots race and find their way out of a maze, all with the magic of computer programming.

As a part of the science and math-based curriculum, 18 students from all nine First Nations of Meadow Lake Tribal Council (MLTC) accompanied by their teachers, are participating in a workshop taught by a pair of graduate students from the University of Saskatchewan (U of S).

Ehsan Sotoodeh, who is one of the facilitators of the workshop and a masters student in the computer science program at the U of S said the robots are controlled by learning a visual programming language.

“We’re teaching the basics of programming and working with coding software,” he said. “They are learning about variables and sensors, then they combine all this together to make their robots work. We have a maze, the robot to escape the maze, we have racing, simple route planning.”

He said he was impressed with how quickly the students were learning their newfound skills.

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“The programming language is complicated but today, the students are really understanding how to work with it super fast. It’s paying off,” Sotoodeh said.

Jody Bender, career and guidance coordinator with MLTC said robotics has become increasingly popular on several levels and the robotics session ties into a number of curriculum goals.

“Everything’s starting to be coding and programming oriented, even with things like self-checkouts,” she said. “Sessions like this help prepare these kids for future learning. All our schools jumped at the chance to take this training. You can tie this into any curriculum. It’s obviously science and math-based, but for ELA, even writing the steps is an important part of the learning process.”

She said everyone in attendance has been very engaged and fascinated by the subject matter.

“The kids are loving it,” Bender said. “During our lunch break, we had most of the students working with their robots and trying new things. Everybody’s very engaged, it doesn’t matter if you’re a 50-year-old teacher or an eight-year-old student, everybody’s learning.”

She said the students and teachers will be taking the robots back to their schools with them, and passing on the knowledge to their fellow classmates and colleagues. She also said this session will help MLTC high school students prepare for the Robot Rumble competition as Saskatchewan Polytechnic in March.

kathy.gallant@jpbg.ca  

On Twitter @ReporterKath