Malta Outreach

This week was the start of our outreach in Malta and we headed to three schools to present our lesson. When we were in the U.S. we had three different one hour lessons that served as an introduction to robotics. Since we were only going to have each group for one hour, we decided to integrate the main ideas from each lesson into one. The lesson consisted of a 12-15 minute presentation followed by a 20-35 minute breakout group small group activity with the scribbler robots.

On Tuesday half of the ICEX team headed to the caves to do some mapping while the other half headed to San Anton School and presented to four six grade classes. When we first got there we had no idea what to expect and how well our lesson plan was going to work with older students. It turned out that this group of classes had previous experience with robotics so we were able to incorporate this to our presentation and also add more complexity to the small group activity.

Amanda Presenting - San Anton School

 On Wednesday the whole team traveled to St. Catherines school and worked with two fifth grade classes. This group also seemed very excited and engaged with the robots. When the second class time ended the class did not want us to go and asked us to stay even longer. The whole group was into programming and testing their respecting robots and then sharing with each others their shapes.

Cecilia Presenting about stages of creating a robot -- St. Catherines

Andrew demoing the scribbler robot -- St. Catherines

Vanessa testing her group's program

For the final day of outreach in Malta, half of the ICEX team traveled to St. Edwards School. We were also able to present to two classes but these were longer then the previous two days. This allowed us to explain more about the programming of the robot and create more complex shapes by the end.

St. Edwards group and part of the ICE

Each group would start with basic shapes like squares and quickly get the hang of it. By the end some groups were into more complex shapes like letters, words, and hearts just to name a few of them. 

Overall, the outreach went way better then I ever expected. Everyone really seemed to enjoy the lesson and liked the scribbler robot. After each day of outreach we would share our experiences and many of them included students expressing a lot of interest in robotics and programming which was a main goal of our outreach.

Next week we will be traveling to Sicily and we are in the process of setting up some more outreach while we are there. Keep checking for more updates!