This document is based on a draft curriculum to be used for the 2016 Fall Tech Club (at the Waldorf School of Pittsburgh). During this club, students will work together to create a robot that can print quotes out using a receipt printer when a button is pressed, and blink its eyes.

Learning Goals; Materials needed; Setup; Curricular plan.

Learning Goals

The learning goals of this set of exercises include

• Understanding the things that make up a computer (memory, processing, and so on)
• How a computer interfaces with the world (by sensing, or actuation) and relating this to things like a keyboard and monitor that are used frequently
  • How to build hardware that can support sensing (specifically using a single button)
  • How to build hardware that can support actuation (specifically, blinking an LED)
• How a computer can build on sensors and actuators to communicate
  • Morse code
  • Print statements
• Programming
  • Primitive types such as integers and booleans
  • Arrays that contain text
  • Picking a random number
  • Conditionals
  • Possibly loops
• 3D modeling for 3D printing
  • Basic constructive geometry
  • Dimensionality in the real world
  • Printability

Materials

Materials include example purchasing links.

Per student (or pair of students):

• Working Raspberry pi
• Pi 16 gb sd card
• Monitor
• Keyboard
• Breadboard
  
• Buttons
• Breakout board connection

For the whole group:

• Jumper Wires
• Wire
• Wire Strippers [ideally 2-3]
• Raspberry pi for the installation (with Wheezy installed)
• Receipt printer
• 330 ohm resistors (need at least 2 per student, 20 is in a pack)
• 5 LEDs (need at least 3 per student, 20 is in a pack)
• Working 3D printer for printing out body parts

• Cardboard box for head
• Table or other stand for robot
• Cardboard box for submitting quotes

• • Pad of paper for writing quotes on
  • Pen to attach to everything

• Materials for decorating robot (think straw man? Or tissue paper & glue? Or paint?)

• • Mod podge
  • Newspaper
  • Acrylic Paint [jen can bring]
• Projector (for demonstrating programming to the class)

Setup

• Make sure each Raspberry pi has a working OS and SD Card
  • At home
  • At school
• Install the following libraries:
  • RPi.GPIO library
  • Can do before they come to school
• Prepare each SD card with source code

Curricular Plan

Week one:

Additional Materials Needed

• Printout of circuit board for a switch
• Printed information on how to read resistors
• Buttons, resistors, breakout boards, etc.

Lesson Plan

• Introduce plan for project
• Introduce the Raspberry Pi
• Introduce typing briefly ?
• Introduce very basic python programming skills
  • http://pythontutor.com/live.html#mode=edit
  • Here is a ‘Hello World’ program
  • Here is a program that randomly selects a number
    • Goal: Produce a program that randomly selects a string from an array of strings
• Introduce how input is taken from a button using the GPIO pins
  • Here is a tutorial on taking input from a switch using a Raspberry pi
  • Work with the students to set-up the circuit

Week 2

• Continue work on circuit setup
• Introduce the python programming environment on the Pi (which they will need to read input from the GPIO pins). Base code for controlling pins Get a working program that responds to a button press
• Come up with a plan for decorating the robot

Week 3

• Introduce Tinkercad
  • Show the students how to make a name tag for themselves
  • Introduce concept of size
  • Let each student make a name tag or bookmark
• Work on Robot decoration project (physical world & regular world)
• Programming
  • Introduce conditionals
  • Work on printing out a string if a button is pressed.
  • Possibly: Improve the button press program by adding de-bouncing

Week 4

Materials:

• Print Picture of LED circuit
• Bring LEDs and Resistors, breakout boards, etc.
• Bring printed versions of bookmarks/name tags that are finished

Activity:

• LED circuit tutorial
• Programming
  • Introduce the concept of output to LEDs
  • Build a circuit that lights an LED up
  • Write a program that lights an LED up
  • Possibly: Work on a version of the circuit / program that has 2 LEDs instead of 1 (or more than 2 LEDs).
  • Possibly: Work on body parts
• Further work on name tags/bookmarks

Week 5

• Programming
  • Introduce concept of Morse code
  • Morse code picture guide
  • Write a program to flash whatever you want (doesn’t have to be morse code)
  • If students want to: Base code for displaying text using MORSE code
  • 3D modeling: Work on body parts
• Others can work on other robotic decorations

Week 6

• Assemble the robot
• Catch up on programming tasks