Let’s code and dance

Publication date: March 29, 2021

By Elka Veselinova from the European School of Brussels III, Belgium. Subjects taught – Mathematics, English and Information and communication technologies (ICT).

Twitter: @elka_veselinova, Facebook: elka.veselinova

To succeed in the twenty-first-century knowledge economy, students need the ability to create, design, innovate, and think critically in order to solve complex challenges. To meet these challenges, we should provide students with new tools and techniques that enable them to learn and then to practice the knowledge they have acquired. Over the past 15 years, a number of robotics kit platforms have come on the market and have introduced students to math, science, and engineering at all grade levels. Moreover, robotics is a remarkable domain that may be successfully employed in the classroom not only to motivate students to develop their coding skills and find their own solutions but also to encourage them to “invent” different types of entertainment.

Let’s code and dance with EV3 is just one example how my 13-14-year-old students combined robotics, coding and entertainment. They worked individually or in pairs to program their EV3 mindstorm Lego Robot to dance. Some created a dance for one robot, others – for two robots. Beginners used mainly the movement blocks and some facial expressions and sounds while more advanced students included some sensors as well. After students created their dance, they found suitable music for it.

Although the task is based on EV3 mindstorm programming, it develops students’ creativity and gives a lot of options for differentiation.

Here are some screenshots of one of the dances: