Workshops are always my favorite part of the VEX Robotics Educators Conference. This year, I taught a really fun GO Coding and Creativity workshop in which students took a pseudocode snippet representing a commonly known fairy tale and used the GO Kit and VEXcode GO to bring that snippet to life.
Each group selected their fairy tale snippet from a list of possibilities (document linked here), but kept it a secret from the other groups. They used resources like GO Build Instructions to help them get started, and then applied creative thinking to build and code their interactive fairy tales based on their chosen snippet. Then at the end of the workshop, participants shared their creations with each other and guessed the fairy tale represented.
The creativity and ingenuity displayed in this workshop was so inspiring!
Check out this Goldilocks build in progress - the GO Disks are the porridge and the LED Bumper on the robot glows green when the “just right” porridge is detected!
Here’s the snippet they used for the project:
This awesome build is Hansel and Gretel’s house - the Eye Sensor triggers the door to open:
And this adorable Pinnochio’s nose grows if you tell a lie!
I love a good coding + literacy connection - and this idea could be adapted for just about any story you want. Here is a link to the Google Slides presentation from the workshop in case it is useful.
If this workshop inspires you and you try it out in some form in your classroom, let us know here! I’d love to hear how other teachers adapt it to fit their particular environments.
