2020 Hour of Code

S3 TECHU ROBOTICS CHALLENGE

‍Who:  S3 TechU member schools may pick any grade level to participate (6th grade is suggested).  Split the class into several teams. Please assign a robot and equipment to a team and wipe it down after each use. Students should have their own Chromebooks/iPads to minimize sharing devices. Please observe social distancing and other recommendations.  We want this to be fun, but safe! Not an S3 TechU school, click here to find out more and register today!

What:  Pick a popular winter/holiday story such as Frosty the Snowman or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, etc.  Make a map of the story and program your robot to move through the map, telling the story/adventure.  Students can add in voice or light programming or make the robot move/dance wherever it is appropriate. Two or more teams could collaborate, each robot playing a different character in the story.  During the practice stages, each team should have their own map.  Once completed, they can come together and try to run their programs simultaneously on the same mat.

Be creative! Add obstacles, music, voice over, etc.  The final submission must include one continuous video of your team/teams playing out the story.  This can be embedded in a larger presentation or video with explanations of how you came up with the topic, how you developed the map and eventually programmed the solution. Please keep the entire final submission under 10 minutes in length.

Please obtain photo releases for the students to be on-camera and recorded if students are visible in the videos. S3 would like to post these videos on our website and via Social Media.  Full student names will not be posted.  Team and School names may be posted.

When: December 7- 11, 2020 is CSW/Hour of Code.  Final Projects will be due December 11 (schools may begin working on the project immediately). We would love to host a Zoom call on December 11 or any day the following week (we can determine an exact date at TechU) with all participating schools and share the projects with each other.  Depending on the number of entries, we will share all submissions or just 1 per school.

Where: At your schools, video submissions will be sent to S3 Technologies. ‍

Why:   To celebrate Computer Science/Hour of Code Week and to engage our students in coding using problem-based learning. ‍

How:  This contest is Robot agnostic. Use whatever robots and programming you have available to you at your school.