Pauline Whitehouse
Hernhill CE Primary School

At this stage we worked in groups of five or six. We used the school hall so that the groups would all have space to work at the same time. One group used the Roamer with the control box attached, while other groups continued to develop their earlier work from Lessons 1 or 2. Groups without immediate access to the ICT equipment spent time in writing about their work so far or in developing scenarios to model using Roamer control.

Once each group had decided on a basic scenario they worked on developing a GO program which would make their simulation as realistic as possible. The groups were encouraged to keep a written record of the instructions used at each stage, so that they could decide where they needed to make changes or add to their program to improve it. We later used Roamer World to make printouts of the GO programs devised.

The following is an example of one group's work.

The group decided to use the Lego helicopter model made earlier and to turn the Roamer into an air-sea rescue helicopter. They imagined that a swimmer had been washed out to sea and the rescue helicopter was going out to recover the victim. They began the GO program by turning on the motor (attached to output 3).

At first they simply instructed the Roamer to move forward towards the Lego person, representing the victim, turn through 180 degrees and move forward until it returned to the start position. It was suggested that they should add in some 'wait' instructions to represent the time it would take to recover the victim and for take off and landing.

They developed the program by turning on a 'searchlight' (attached to output 1). They also decided it would look more realistic if the 'helicopter' turned all the way around as if it was searching for the victim. The GO program rescue2 shows their instructions. It also contains an instruction to turn the searchlight off by setting output 1 low.

An alternative challenge

Attach red, amber and green lights to the control box and program the Roamer to simulate a traffic light sequence. This idea works well in limited space or at a desk, as it doesn't involve any movements.