Finding Finch

Around PSSA time, I find out that we have Finch Robots in our possession. Being new to the world of coding and robots, I figured why not try it out. As anyone diving into the unknown knows, sometimes you just have to try it out and see what happens.

At first, I unknowingly cheated using the expansion pack to make the Finch Robot draw and easily hooked my students that way. Later after Bambi, Curriculum Director at BirdBrain Technologies, came into my classroom to demonstrate how to teach students to explore programming the Finch Robot; I find out I was not supposed to use that feature!!! We learn by doing and we learn from our mistakes we make. 

I now know to use the Scratch Finch Basics on http://www.finchrobot.com/teaching/scratch-finch-basics. This is like a jump start guide to using Scratch and Finch to learn the basic functions of what the robot can do. For instance, they learned how to make the Finch robot move, change its beak color, and play sound.

Below is a quick video clip of students using sound and changing its beak color to the beat of the short sound clip! I was very impressed because this was only the second time they played with sound and the color features of programming the Finch!