Background
We already have a couple of BeeBots in school but they are not greatly used by classes. We decided to borrow extra to allow them to be used as a whole class resource and so increase staff and pupil awareness of how they could be used.
How ICT supported learning and teaching
The BeeBots provided a huge motivation for the children and encouraged them to engage with the tasks given. They meant that the children were active in their learning, which in most classes linked to maths. They gave the children great opportunity to develop talking and listening skills, group work and problem solving skills.
Impact/Conclusion
An enthusiastic response from staff and pupils throughout the school. They added a new dimension to the maths programme and encouraged the use of mathematical language in the children. We are already seeing greater use of the BeeBots that we have in school and are hoping to order more to enhance our ICT provision.
We borrowed these items to use primarily in our ‘Gadgets and Gizmos Golden Time Club,’ however, they were also used in many active learning lessons and with groups of children during ICT teaching. They were very useful for directional language, programming, and also in estimation and counting.
Here are some of the children’s comments. “These were good because you can program them and they were fun and easy to work with.” “They were useful in our map work where we could test each other with directions.” “I liked the cool noises.” “Fun to play with.”
Evaluation of Beebots
Strengths:
- Using Beebots allowed children to participate in active learning, which helped enhance their understanding of position, direction and movement.
- They helped contextualise learning for children, who otherwise found it very difficult to distinguish between left and right.
- Children successfully followed instructions and it made describing a journey easier for most of them. Use of the Beebots helped increase children’s confidence in a fun and active way.
- Children worked well both independently and co-operatively in helping one another describe a journey. They took more ownership and responsibility in their learning.
- We found Beebot to be a good small group activity.
Areas that could be improved to make better use of Beebots:
- We did not have all the appropriate materials/resources to carry out tasks i.e. Beebot mats. Therefore, all resources had to be made, which was quite time consuming and an extra work load for us. As well as this, the resources made were not suitable for all tasks, where Beebot could otherwise have been used.
- I feel that in order to make the best use out of Beebots, more support is needed in the class to help train all children to use this technology more independently and successfully. I found that using Beebots when the classroom assistant was present was much more effective- better working in smaller groups.
S. Bhopal
October 2010
Have a look at Primary 3 using the Beebots
Continue reading Beebots at Tannochside →
Background
Started with free play, allowing Bee Bots to travel under the bridges and visit different places in town
Mathematics – linked to money and programming
Pupils had been learning about money to 10p so pupils then were asked to write a simple programme to make a total of 10p
How ICT supported learning and teaching
Extended mathematics for more able pupils. Challenging group to write the programme to allow the Bee Bot to Make 10p
Impact / conclusion
Pupils were extremely motivated and engaged and used good mathematical language to solve the problems.
Fantastic resource to use in many different curricular areas next steps would be to link to novel study – visit the characters and places in the book. Then set pupils a challenge to design own grid map and give to another group with a problem to solve.
We have bought some with Tesco vouchers for schools and hoping to purchase a few more and timetable for classes to use.
Yvonne Gibb
Background
Chapelhall Primary School are trying to use their school grounds as a place of learning. This is the priority area for their Gold Health and a day of outdoor learning and fun was planned as part of this. This coincided with the inspection for their Gold Health Award and the Beebots and Probots were one of the activities planned as part of this event.
How ICT supported learning and teaching
Beebots and Probots helped to meet this by being part of the learning planned for outdoors on the day of the above event. The children all learned how to program a computerised toy and were able to follow a route using their program. They were able to devise their own routes to given criteria and drew lines, shapes and patterns using the Probots.
Impact / conclusion
This day was a great success and having the Beebots and Probots to use helped to make it more fun for the children. They worked together in groups and co-operated with each other for the activities.
These will be added to the requests for school purchases at a later date.
Pupils had already used Roamer but these have been a great progression to independent work for small groups and pairs.
How ICT supported learning and teaching
Activities with Beebots allowed groups to work independently after initial instructions and demonstrations. Some pupils discovered for themselves how the gadgets used instructions entered. The thinking process that pupils had to engage into programming the Beebot was very valuable.
Impact / conclusion
I would love to have them as part of school resource or on a termly basis from the centre.
Feedback on ICT Hardware in the classroom
