Our teachers – Miss J. Au Yeung and Mrs. E. Lo Our class in the LEAD symposium on
During this MIT Programme,
we wrote learning logs to record the process and express our
feelings. Here are some examples of our work...
Discuss the changes in your
group's design. Today, after the
demonstration and the introduction of the robotic arm made by Mrs. Lo, our
group immediately came up with a new idea. We tried to combine the 2
designs together in order to let the robot pick up objects from the
floor. However, it did not work well. We then enlarged the size and
increased the weight of the base of the robot. Our programmers, Fiona and
Priscilla, then set another program for our design. Our researchers,
Evelyn and Libby, found some more information
from the Internet to improve our design and that enhanced our ideas and
techniques. Explain why the changes take
place. We enlarged the size and
increased the weight of the base of the robot because when we tested the
robot today, we found that the robot was swinging and its arms were
dangling in the air. We then tried a lot of ways to solve the problem and
at last we resolved the problem with this solution. Discuss with examples any
difficulties you encountered in the process. Although we had our product
made finally, in the process of making it, we encountered a lot of
problems. Our Lego blocks were not strong and heavy enough to support the
body of the robot and the RCX. The arms always fell and we needed to
break the robot down and start our work from the beginning. We tried and
tried and tried continuously, but it still kept on falling. Though we
have not yet found a solution, we would look for further information and
apply different skills to our design in order to solve the problem. Suggest how you overcame the
difficulties with the Habits of Mind. We tried out the solutions persistently
and cooperated with each other. We used our creativity
and imagination to improve our design and always came
up with good ideas. Although sometimes we thought the
design or ideas might not work, we took responsible
risks and tried them out. Sometimes, we also applied
a sense of humour to boost morale and to make the working process
more enjoyable. What have you learnt in two
days' sessions? I was really pleased to have
a session to guide us on presentation skills. I have learnt that eye
contact, poise and voice projection are very important though we may
sometimes pay no attention to them. We should improve on these while
presenting. Moreover, I gained a lot of inspirations from other groups to
make our presentation more interesting. We can add stories and dialogues
to present our products. I appreciate the critique session at the end of
every presentation because we can collect
opinions from teachers and other classmates. What are my inspirations from
the activities? My inspirations are there are
always more than one solution to each task and more than one way to
achieve a goal. The most important point is that the best way may not
necessarily be obvious, so we always need patience to dig very deep in
order to find them out. I can see that we need to try out
many times before we can efficiently and effectively complete a
difficult task. Discuss how you solved the
problem in the end. Discuss whether you have applied any Habits of Mind
to help you solve the problem. During the process of solving
problem, I applied quite a few "Persisting"
- I kept on trying until I succeeded; "Thinking
flexibly" - I had to think of different possible ways to
solve my problems; "Striving for
accuracy" - I had to measure the most accurate angle,
length, width and height; Lastly, of course I applied "Creating, Imagining,
Innovating" - to make the model more
smart-looking. What have you learnt about
collaboration and communication in the process? At the beginning, there were
always arguments among our groupmates and we were
lack of communication. However, now we learnt that, in order to
collaborate well, we should understand each other more since everyone is
good at different things, so we should make use of others' talents and
learn from them. At the same time, we should help others in things that
they are not good at. Now, our group is working together very well and
even that we are not the ones to build the machine,
we can also tell others something about it.