Design Your Own Robot:
Teachers' Guide

The Robots Gallery contains an on-line interactive, explanatory materials, and a number of accompanying activities intended to be done in a classroom setting.

We suggest you take your own tour of the Robot Gallery before sending your students. Doing so will familiarize you with the interactives and the background information and activities designed to accompany them.

Think about how you want your students to move through the galleries, what you want them to do first and the order of the remaining activities in which you want them to participate. Map out a strategy for your class, either using the order we suggest or another one that suits you better.

Be aware that there is a lot here. You may pick and choose among these materials or use all of them. If you do want to use all the materials, you will most likely spend several days engaging with them.

Some of the concepts presented here may seem rather technical or unfamiliar. But don't hesitate to jump in and try the interactives even if you don't understand everything about how they work. You and your students will learn much from just trying these interactives and seeing and discussing what happens.

1. Go to Design Your Own Robot: Pre-Activities. This page describes the Design Your Own Robot Interactive and provides background material about the six major characteristics involved in robot design.
2. Go to the Design Your Own Robot interactive. Here, you will have a chance to design and build your own robots, intended to accomplish six specific tasks.
3. After you've finished the Design Your Own Robot interactive, go to the Design Your Own Robot Links page. This page has links to detailed information on robots, robot construction kits and robot competitions.
4. After exploring some of these links, come back to Design Your Own Robot: Post-Activities. This page contains discussion questions about the interactive your class has just finished exploring.