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The Martian Movie and Introducing Programming and Robotics with the Sphero Bolt Robot

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Steven M. HadfieldAuthors Info & Claims

ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Page 568

https://doi.org/10.1145/3341525.3393964

Published: 15 June 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

In 2015, The Martian movie based on Andy Weir's novel of the same name reignited interest in manned space flight travel as well as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The movie's riveting story line provided fertile ground for the development of a theme-based curriculum to introduce secondary and first-year university students to computer programming and robotics using the Sphero SPRK+ robotic ball. This sequenced curriculum leverages the SPRK+'s movements, lights, gyroscope, and accelerometers to advance students from blocks-based to text-based programming with JavaScript using a series of exercises and challenges based upon key events in the movie. With this effort, we evolve the Sphero SPRK+ based curriculum to the advanced features of the next generation Sphero Bolt robotic ball.

References

[1]

Steven M. Hadfield, Justin T. Raynor, and Matthew D. Sievers. 2018. Engaging Secondary and Post-Secondary Students to Learn and Explore Programming Using a Theme-Based Curriculum and the Sphero SPRK

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[2]

Robot. In Proceedings of the 2018 Western Canadian Conference on Computing Education (WCCCE '18). ACM, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3209635.3209643

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[3]

Andy Weir. 2014. The Martian. Crown Publishing Group.

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Index Terms

The Martian Movie and Introducing Programming and Robotics with the Sphero Bolt Robot
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
    1. Robotics
2. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. Computing education programs
        Computer science education

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Information

Published In

ITiCSE '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 2020

615 pages

ISBN:9781450368742

DOI:10.1145/3341525

General Chairs:
Michail Giannakos
NTNU, Norway
,
Guttorm Sindre
Excited/NTNU, Norway
,
Program Chairs:
Andrew Luxton-Reilly
University of Auckland, NZ
,
Monica Divitini
NTNU, Norway

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 15 June 2020

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ITiCSE '20

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SIGCSE

ITiCSE '20: Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

June 15 - 19, 2020

Trondheim, Norway

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Overall Acceptance Rate 552 of 1,613 submissions, 34%

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Recommendations

Engaging Secondary and Post-Secondary Students to Learn and Explore Programming Using a Theme-Based Curriculum and the Sphero SPRK+ Robot

Experience Hands-On K-12 and First-Year University Coding Curricula Based on the Sphero SPRK+ Robot

Android+Sphero: teaching mobile computing and robotics in a single course (abstract only)