Anna Carver of Ithaca (left) and
Margo Zgola of Trumansburg constructed a robotic inch-worm out
of Lego parts and then wrote a computer program to make it move
at the five-day Summer Robotics Program, held at the College
in July. The two middle schoolers were among some 15 students
who enrolled in the program, now in its second year. Under the
instruction of Pat Woodworth, associate professor of mathematics
and computer science, the students used Lego kits to build a
lever arm, an assembly line, and other robotic devices and then
wrote the computer programs that activated various sensors and
made the robots work.
"Most students at this age
already know about Legos and some know about computers, but almost
none have done any programming," Woodworth says. "What
makes it interesting is to write a step in a computer language
and then see how that instruction makes the parts move the way
the programmer wants them to. It’s one thing to simply use
a computer; it’s another to know how to control what a computer
does."
Anna Carver of Ithaca (left) and
Margo Zgola of Trumansburg constructed a robotic inch-worm out
of Lego parts and then wrote a computer program to make it move
at the five-day Summer Robotics Program, held at the College
in July. The two middle schoolers were among some 15 students
who enrolled in the program, now in its second year. Under the
instruction of Pat Woodworth, associate professor of mathematics
and computer science, the students used Lego kits to build a
lever arm, an assembly line, and other robotic devices and then
wrote the computer programs that activated various sensors and
made the robots work.
"Most students at this age
already know about Legos and some know about computers, but almost
none have done any programming," Woodworth says. "What
makes it interesting is to write a step in a computer language
and then see how that instruction makes the parts move the way
the programmer wants them to. It’s one thing to simply use
a computer; it’s another to know how to control what a computer
does."