Ozobot Transformations and Graphing Functions Projects

Last summer I got the crazy idea in my head that I should incorporate robotics into my high school math classroom.  I did a ton of research and narrowed down my first choice of robot to +OZOBOT.  Then, by just being very very lucky, I learned that +Tryazon was doing a party/giveaway opportunity.  I won one Ozobot bit for myself and one to given away to a party guest.  I wrote about that initial experience here.

After this experience, I decided to apply for a grant through our local education foundation.  Again, I was lucky enough to be chosen.  MTEF bought a class set of Ozobots for my classroom.  Here is what I've done with the Ozobots so far.

I knew that I wanted the end product to be a path that the Ozobots would follow.  This year I'm teaching geometry and algebra 2, so I decided to do this assignment with transformations in geometry and as a cumulative review of graphing lots of types of functions for algebra 2.

In both classes, I started with this activity.  It served as a great introduction to line following robots in real life as well as a how to guide on how our Ozobots work.  I teach in a station based hybrid classroom, so this activity served as one station out of 4.  During the other stations students received direct instruction and small group instruction on the mathematical concepts of transformations and graphing.  This pattern continued throughout the duration of the project.

The next activity that I did with both classes involved students learning about the color codes and completing puzzles/mazes with the Ozobots.  I scanned these images from the Ozobot bit starter pack that I mentioned earlier from Tryazon.

Here are the  files for this portion of the assignment:

Ozocodes and Calibration Guide
Puzzle 1
Puzzle 2
Puzzle 3
Puzzle 4

Finally, I gave the students 3 stations worth of time (about 60 minutes total) to complete the end product, a path for the Ozobot's to follow.  This happened about every other day over the course of a week.  Here are the documents that I gave to students.

Geometry Assignment

Algebra 2 Assignment

And  finally here are some of the final products from my students.

Many of my students would be reluctant to admit it, but they did enjoy this assignment.  The excitement came when they put their Ozobots through the final run and the tiny robots were able to make it through their courses. 

In the future, I'm looking to use the robots again to practice solving systems of equations by graphing.  I'm hoping to have students use OzoBlockly to program the bots to plot the lines.  I'd love to hear about your ideas for how you'd use the bots in your classroom.  Please share your ideas.