Coding with a turkey twist

Schuyler Achievement Academy fourth and fifth graders took part in a technological turkey trot on Monday, using their STEM smarts to design paths for tiny robot “turkeys” to march in a fictional Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

The robots are actually ozobots, wheeled devices about the size of a paddle ball that recognize and respond to different combinations of the colors red, blue, green and black. Each color combination makes the robot move in a different way; students used algorithms to create different paths to control the robots.

Students spent an hour in the school tech lab with Laurie Ellis, a STEM instructional coach at Schuyler, and district technology coaches Sooyun McCarthy and Terrance McNally.

The young engineers coded their ozobots through mazes, along pathways they created, and around outlines of a turkey and their hand.

You can see more photos of the fun in this Facebook album. (You don't need a Facebook account to see the pictures linked in the highlighted text. A window may appear that says, “To see more from Albany City Schools on Facebook, log on or create an account,” but you can dismiss it by clicking “not now.”)