By Lauren Goldberg, Curriculum Coordinator
"Sphero is so easy to control. It goes to the right place every time."
"Sphero is an unresponsive, hard-to-control robot."
These statements will be added as captions under nearly-identical photographs of the activity taking place in Lindsay Petroski's sixth grade technology class. With the help of an iPad app, students have been learning to program and direct Spheros, small robotic balls that roll and skitter across the floor of the tech lab. This week, the Sphero Olympics are underway, and teams of budding engineers are racing Spheros across specially marked tracks on the carpet.
The extreme comments quoted above, about the accuracy of the devices, are also part of the project. Lindsay has been embedding lessons about media literacy and bias into her lessons, with a focus on raising the students' awareness of the ways in which images and events can be interpreted. On this particular race day, Lindsay assigns different points of view to different teams. She names three partner pairs, and says, "you are going to be the 'positives.' Whatever you say is going to be super-enthusiastic and good." She directs another group of students to be neutral. "You might have the hardest job, to keep your opinion out of it. Your task is to state the facts." And finally, a third group is instructed to take a negative perspective. "You need to show how everything is terrible," she explains with a grin.
As the races get underway, teams approach the starting line with their Spheros and iPads. The first round of competition is for speed; lights flash and the balls scoot down the taped lanes. Some teams are eliminated when their robots stray out of bounds; others have trouble holding to a straight course and suffer from slower finish times.
The next round is more technical; each Sphero needs to navigate the race course and cross specifically marked spots along the way to the finish line. Students experiment with slower, more accurate controls, varying direction, and start-stop motion. The energy in the room is lively but focused. Random Spheros roll under the stools and tables while non-competing groups practice their skills. At the front of the room, Lindsay and several other students keep track of all the results on the white board. Times range from the super-fast 2-second speed trial to the 34-second careful navigation of the obstacle course.
Each team is responsible for capturing a photograph and generating a caption according to their designated media bias. "I'm going to say that our time was slow, but it wasn't our fault. My caption is, 'The Sphero is not fit for the Olympics,' " says one boy who was assigned to take a negative view. A more positive interpretation of a slow finish time comes from a student who says, "The trials are the most important part of learning."
During their next class, the students will finalize their captions and analyze the data set of all of the finish times. "The end goal is to write a news story about the event, using what we've learned about media bias," Lindsay says.
From a deceptively simple robotic device to a complex discussion about how data and images can be distorted or interpreted, our students are becoming technologically savvy and media literate consumers. Watch out underfoot as you enter the technology lab—there is a lot of learning happening.