#How to make a computer program that learns how to#
Students finished their designs, wrote programs to run their wind turbines, incorporated touch or light sensors to turn them on and off, AND teacher and students' problems were solved together when they were unsure of how to do something. She took the risk! And you know what? It worked. If it does not work out, you have total I told you so rights,” I replied in my email. With its robotics and programming, this project was a vehicle to apply that skill in addition to learning about Wind Turbines.
Because really, nobody knows the answers to everything, and the skill of finding the solution was universally integral to learning in all subject matters. I told her to lead with the students, and if they got stuck, they would “together” debug. She emailed me, planning to cancel the class and wait for my return. Then one day, I was sick and unable to come to work. “Let the students program the Computer,” I said, not “the computer program the students.” After some negotiation, she agreed but insisted I lead the classes. In the beginning, this teacher was adamant we strictly follow the programming tutorial that came with the robotic set before even starting this project. Over the past two weeks, the students had been studying wind energy and were “commissioned” to design, build and program a wind turbine that turned off when it got dark and back on when it was daylight. The ILC was a spacious and open environment with a variety of resources available where students could imagine, design, create, and build artifacts that were tied to their course of study at hand. “They did it, they did it, WE did it!” an enthusiastic sixth grade teacher called me at home, relaying how a technology lesson went that day in our integrated learning center (ILC) created a year before.