The Beagle III

This week I taught a lesson of ICT (Information Communication Technology), i.e. computers.
The national curriculum expects children to learn how to give machines instructions in order to "make things happen".

The school has two little robots which you can programme to move around the floor, so I took them home and taught them how to crash into the pepper pot on our kitchen lino. (And I taught them how to sing Frere Jacque. My Nanna would be proud).

The next day, whilst the children were in assembly, I re-created the surface of Mars (a row of garish aliens with an unusual number of legs; "space rocks" (shiny paper) and blue Martian bricks) and laboriously programmed one of the little robots to travel in and out of the various obstacles. This is trickier than it needs to be, because the programme is cumulative, so each time you plug in a new instruction you have to carry the wretched thing back to the beginning so it can grate through the whole programme again. (The point of this was to demonstrate to the children firstly, how the robot can move. Secondly, I could then re-run the programme after having moved an obstacle into the path of the robot, so we could discuss whether the robot was alive, and whether it could see. After that, the children could have a go at programming some very simple instructions themselves, like forward 2 or backwards 6, to win jelly babies.)

Eventually, after moving the space mountains a bit to the left, and changing the robot's launch pad a bit to the right, and entering the wrong instructions, wiping the memory and starting all over again at least twice, then shunting the space bricks backwards, and twisting the garish aliens closer to the door, and squashing the space mountains closer together, the robot finally glided effortlessly around my space rocks and aliens and Martian bricks, to the robot food (jelly babies). I was ready for children.

The children returned, all merrily humming "this little light of mine" (and I didn't even think about laughing). I sat them down and explained that we were setting off on a dangerous mission to mars to explore the surface of the red planet. I explained that it was SO dangerous that we had to get a robot to explore for us, and we were all going to be captains of mission control.

Mission control then lined up at the door, ready for take-off, blasted into outer space and sat in a circle around the surface of mars. I went to retrieve the robot from it's hiding place, but it slipped in my hands; CRASHing to the floor (sweet spatulas above, by the hammer of Thor; I didn't kill a child. Or even injure one.)

The robot was also still in one piece, (they're pretty tough) and I set it down onto it's launch pad. The class is hanging onto my every word (jelly babies are an extraordinarily powerful teaching tool); and to be honest, I'm pretty excited to be on the surface of mars myself. I reach down to turn on the little exploring robot, and, holding my breath, I punch "GO".

The robot starts to move. Instead of gliding smoothly along my carefully prepared obstacle course, it starts spinning around on the spot, heads off at an angle towards the children (who rapidly scoot back on their bottoms to get away), then starts spinning again, darting about unfathomably, then stops, and bleeps out "Frere Jacques".

I should've known something would go wrong. Us Brits don't seem to have much luck at exploring Mars.