Sphero robots help teach STEAM skills

Fifth-grade students in Williamsburg Community SD are getting to know a new classmate called Sphero – a programmable robot designed to teach coding skills – in their STEAM class. The robots, on loan from the IU 8 STEM Lending Center, can either be driven or programmed to start, stop, turn, change color, speed up and make sounds. The class had been working with the robots to learn how to connect them via Bluetooth to tablets and control them by creating obstacle courses. According to a video on the district’s website, the students worked in pairs on a special project. They created a “dream” town and drew illustrations of their favorite stores. They then designed a challenge which required them to program the robots to stop at four stores, complete several turns to go through the town and go to a final location. The students learned valuable coding skills while having fun!