Skip to main content

Happy Hour of Code Week

By Anonymous

Don't forget that next week is the Hour of Code, a global initiative to entice people of all ages to learn one hour of coding through games.  You don't need to do anything more than download some promotional materials and lead patrons to the website for them to sign in.  To extend the hour of code beyond the website, we'll be putting out some of our robots to try.

This year's newest addition to our circulating collection is the adorable Dash robot. Who is by far my favorite robot that I have played with because Dash actually has a personality! I immediately wanted to hug him and yell "Johnny 5 Alive!" Dash talks, blinks, lights up and runs around on 3 wheels. He has a companion robot, Dot, many fun accessories, and even Lego brick adapters.

The apps that I downloaded for him on our iPad gen. 2 (gen 1 won't work) are:

Blockly
Path
Blockly Jr.
Wonder

Wonder is the hardest and least intuitive app, aimed for experienced robotics users or at least middle school students with Path being the easiest.  I posted a video of Dash at the race track using Path on Instagram. Blockly took a few minutes to get going but if you have any experience with Scratch programs it will be immediately understood.  All of these are free downloads.

My other new robot this year is for the preschool set called Bee Bot. He doesn't require an iPad and is simply there to teach basic order of operations using 7 buttons on his back: LEFT, RIGHT, FORWARD, BACKWARD, STOP, PAUSE & GO. Here is a great classroom example of its use.  You could build it a little obstacle course and challenge kids to safely make Bee Bot go through the path.

I was practicing with Dash today at the desk and a little boy about 2 came up to it completely in awe. He WOULD NOT talk to me but he readily said, "Goodbye Dash!" on his way out. His grandmother had said this is probably his first experience seeing a robot and isn't that what the " Library of the Future" is all about?
Labels:

Comments

  1. BloggerNovember 2, 2017 at 8:54 AM

    Ever wanted to get free Facebook Followers?
    Did you know you can get these ON AUTOPILOT AND TOTALLY FOR FREE by registering on Like 4 Like?

    ReplyDelete
  2. BriannaJanuary 18, 2025 at 8:35 AM

    It sounds like you have some exciting new robots at your library!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting!

Popular posts from this blog

3D Printing Signs for the Library Collection

By Anonymous
Last weekend, I went to the annual Tee-Off mini golf event at the Brookline Public Library.  As a first time visitor, I was mini-golfing with my phone at the ready. Special thanks to the AMAZING librarian rockstar Robin Brenner for so many great ideas. It truly is worth a visit just to see her teen room. Here are a few 3D printing/marketing ideas to takeaway: Having a  3D printer filtration cart would be wonderful in our library.  Look at the price if you dare.  Right now I have to go downstairs to retrieve prints because we are concerned about the fumes and little hands touching anything while the printer is on.  I have a video camera set up downstairs using an iPad 2 and the free app called Presence  for monitoring but sometimes I do forget to keep checking the presence website while I'm on the desk especially since it makes this annoying beeping sound to say, "Are you still watching?!"..As the sign reveals on the cart, the propensity to want to lean or...
29 comments
Read more

Our most popular makerspace/STEM/Library of Things

By Anonymous
As of April 2018, we did a kit circulation report.  We had 106 kits which have circulated 1,047 times since it's inception in 2015.  Here is the top 10 list of most circulated. These include hobby kits, puzzles, cake pans, instruments, science robots/STEM, and American Girl dolls. The ukulele kits (we have one soprano and one concert kit) have been around the longest and have circulated 106 times total.  Just remember someone should change the strings yearly and definitely include a tuner (we like the snark) as new strings on a uke take a while to break in. Surprisingly our meditation toolbox comes in second with 51 checkouts.  It is just some CDs and a DVD.  This one has also been around since the inception of our kits. Next up is our virtual reality headset toolbox.  It is a Homido Virtual Reality headset. If that is too pricey, I recommend Google Cardboard.  Our sewing machine comes in 5th.  Knitting is a great idea fo...
4 comments
Read more

Cozmo has a new brother, VECTOR!

By Anonymous
If Amazon Alexa and Cozmo got together and had a kid it would be Vector , the latest from the Anki company. You can ask Vector "Alexa" questions like "what's the weather?" plus he he has all the charm of Cozmo. He can recognize your face, he has better motion sensors (so he doesn't fall off the table like Cozmo tends to do), and he knows when to go back to his space to recharge. He's more like your personal assistant than a robot child who always wants to play games with you and WIN. He has a timer, built in camera (you can ask him to take a picture), and can play Blackjack with you. He also syncs with Alexa so you can add items to a shopping list, set reminders, control household devices, and more.  He will even come when called! I love their website. They joke around about the "robot evil overloads" because once you see it, you know we're all thinking it. Good thing he's still tiny.
5 comments
Read more