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Jordy and I had our first classroom visit on February 24th, after having a snow day the week before. We had met with our teacher, Kristen Shanahan, two weeks earlier and were really encouraged by her enthusiasm for the STOMP program and for using NXT robotics with the students. As an introduction to programming and the Engineering Design Process, we first asked the students to share their knowledge of engineers-- who they are, what they do, and what skills they possess. To demonstrate the various fields of engineering, we showed the class familiar images such as the Zakin bridge (civil engineering), a race track (mechanical engineering), a prosthetic limb (biomedical engineering) and the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland (environmental engineering).

Our main activity was the Human Robot, where the students had to program the STOMPers (Jordy and I) as robots to preform certain tasks. First they selected a destination for Jordy to reach, and tried to instruct her to walk using very specific and minute instructions. Our teacher introduced the concept of a loop (pick up foot and move it forward, then other foot, repeat 5 times). She also had one student familiar with NXT programming use time intervals in the instructions, such as "move right hand forward for 3 seconds." This will be a useful concept to understand when the students use the NXT software on their computers to program their NXT cars. The second robot task, where I had to draw a picture on the whiteboard, was much more complex and generated a lot of student involvement; the kids all got out of their desks and crowded around the board trying to "program" me to pick up the marker and draw a smiley face. They had a lot of fun with it, so overall it was definitely a successful activity. We also replicated our activity in a mock classroom at a Wednesday STOMP meeting where it was similarly well received.

In order to direct the class reflections on the activity and get them thinking about bigger picture of programming, we introduced the Engineering Design Process flow chart afterwards and applied it to what they just did. We emphasized the concept of redesign as something that is vital to creating a successful model, prototype, etc. Recognizing your mistakes and learning how to fix them will be a theme that we will return to throughout the semester, with reference to the design process diagram. With the brief time remaining, we divided the group into pairs and handed out the LEGO Mindstorms kits, allowing them to experiment on their own how to build a sturdy structure, and familiarize themselves with the materials/pieces in the kits. In the next classroom, we will have the students begin to build their NXT cars and if there is time program the cars to drive for a certain amount of time. This leads into the distance-time activity where students learn about the linear relationship between the two variables, and will be able to program their cars to drive a specified distance based on entering a certain time on the computer. The kids are really good listeners and active participants, and are very excited to start building!