Olin university chapter/Projects/Curriculum

Turtle Art Curriculum

This lab-based curriculum is designed to teach a variety of math and engineering concepts through [Turtle Art]. It will be running for the first time as a after school program for 3rd - 5th graders at John Eliot Elementary School in Needham, MA in spring 2010.

Skills and Concepts

The following is a list of what we hope the students will be able to learn from this program. Due to time constraints, it is probably that some of the robotics items will not get covered this semester.

• angles and lengths
• geometric interpretations of algebraic expressions
• geometric intuition
• precise language
• variables
• repetition
• recursion
• human interface
• robotics(using the XObot)
  • sensors
  • motors
  • manual control
  • sensor-based control

Some of these skills and concepts are things we hope that the students will pick up just by using Turtle Art, such as precise language. However, for many of them we have designed a lab specifically to introduce that concept.

Labs

• introduction to turtleart: draw your name, convert a drawing into a turtleart program
• angles and lengths: make regular polygons
• geometric interpretations of algebraic expressions: make a visual representation of an equation (e.g. 3+4=7 could be represented with three lines)
• repetition: circle patterns from the FLOSS manual, tesselations
• variables: color spectra
• recursion: fractals(top hat, Sierpinski's triangle)
• interfacing with people: control turtle from keyboard, make a turtleart game
• robot
  • motors: hook up to the xobot
  • sensors: turtleart oscilloscope
  • manual control: move the xobot with a mouse click
  • sensor control: move the xobot to a particular distance from another xo