Summary

Students at Geelong Grammar preparatory campus in Toorak learning to program Valiant Turtle robot. Photo taken by Liddy Nevile.
In this photograph the students have moved out of the classroom and into the yard to physically test the programming path for the robot Valiant Turtle. Forming connections with formal mathematical concepts is often a challenge for children. Acting out the mathematics with their own body can be powerful (what Papert calls syntonicity). In this image, children are working around a corner but not using ideas such as 'veer left' as they might on a bicycle. Instead they are distinguishing motion from turn and both are required to be precisely specified. Microworlds, as they were called, were a feature of Sunrise activities. In this microworld, the action was constrained by the limit to move (so far forward or back) and turn (right or left so many degrees). The idea was that within the constraints, children would have to negotiate the Turtle Geometry of the situation, and would very soon unconsciously master this aspect of the formal mathematical geometry actions and entities.

This digital image forms part of the Sunrise Collection which includes educational robots, software and multimedia recordings of teachers and students exploring new possibilities with computer programming.

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