A Wall-Crawling Roomba That Teaches Kids to Code

Michael Morguarge

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Published By: The Atlantic, 11/30/2016

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Summary

A team of engineers from Harvard University have created a robot named Root, along with a multi-language coding environment to program it. Their goal is to provide a cost-effective learning tool that will teach people of all ages how to code.

Extended Discussion Questions

The article quotes a professor from Tuft University who is concerned that a single robot cannot universally teach all age groups. How are the creators of Root attempting to overcome that issue?
Think about what your elementary school taught you about computers and coding.
- How is Root different?
- Do you think if students in that school now had something like Root, more of them would end up taking a class like this in high school? Why or why not?
The head of the project mentions that social and economic gaps can inhibit schools from introducing coding to students.
- How could Root, a relatively inexpensive teaching tool, help bridge the social and economic gap?
- In what ways might it still fall short? For example, what else do you need besides the robot? (Examples to aim at: Computers or tablets to program on, magnetic whiteboards, teachers trained in teaching programming; even $2000 a set can be too steep in some districts….)

Relating This Story to the CSP Curriculum Framework

Global Impact Learning Objectives:

LO 7.2.1 Explain how computing has impacted innovations in other fields.
LO 7.4.1 Explain the connections between computing and real-world contexts, including economic, social, and cultural contexts.

Global Impact Essential Knowledge:

EK 7.4.1D Groups and individuals are affected by the “digital divide” — differing access to computing and the Internet based on socioeconomic or geographic characteristics.

Other CSP Big Ideas:

Idea 1 Creativity

Banner Image: “Network Visualization – Violet – Offset Crop”, derivative work by ICSI. New license: CC BY-SA 4.0. Based on “Social Network Analysis Visualization” by Martin Grandjean. Original license: CC BY-SA 3.0