Students program Ozobot to teach them geography

Andalusia Elementary School students in Jessica Tucker’s fifth grade class have spent then week learning from a little gadget called OzoBot.

“I was part of the Alabama Bicentennial Master Teacher Program this summer in Montgomery,” Tucker said. “I was one of 12 teachers in the state that trained on OzoBots. It’s this little robot that can be coded to do different things.”

The students have enjoyed using the tiny robot.

“It’s a cool little robot that you can put coding in,” Montana Carnley said. “It responds to different color patterns and it will do tricks when it gets to certain patterns. Some of the patterns tell it to go fast, some tell it to stop and some tell it to spin.”

Currently, the students are using it to learn about Nellie Bly’s journey around the world in 72 days.

“We have been reading about Nellie Bly’s trip around the world in 72 days,” Tabitha Long said. “Nellie read the book ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ and she wanted to beat that. She stopped in a lot places and was worried she wouldn’t make it, but her determination pulled her through.”

The students mapped Bly’s trip on a world map and added color codes for OzoBot to stop and do tricks at Bly’s stops.

“The map shows all the places that she stopped on her journey,” Kylee Lunsford said. “The robot takes the route that she took and stops where she stopped. Along the journey, we have learned about the different places that she stopped. It has been a lot of fun.”