Yesterday, @Lauren_Harter and I were invited to talk to a class of pre-service teachers at Duquesne University. The class they are in is all about teaching secondary math, so we brought VEX EXP with us.
They seemed to be so engaged as they all took a turn driving the Clawbot, then we did a couple coding demonstrations together. But my favorite part was the conversations we got to have about authentically teaching math concepts not on a worksheet or through problems in a textbook, but by coding a robot or reengineering the design.
One of the things we talked about was applying the Pythagorean Theorem to calculate distances a robot would need to travel to accomplish a task. Which we actually have a direct instruction video about in the Castle Crasher STEM Lab Unit.
There’s also an entire article in the STEM Library about this as well! Which applies math using VEXcode VR, but those same concepts could apply to any platform using VEXcode.
How do YOU see yourself integrating math and science with VEX EXP? What ideas do you have for future activities?
