This activity was an experiment during my last practicum to seamlessly incorporate robotics and coding into the science classroom as part of an authentic project-based activity.

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I based this activity around Western University's CanMars 2016 analogue mission. After learning about the CanMars analogue mission and listening to a "day in the life" of one of the students working on the mission, students were split into groups whereby they designed terrain for their analogue mission using their previous knowledge of martian terrain features with classroom materials including textbooks and plasticine. After building their terrain students worked to code their Lego Mindstorms "rover" to successfully traverse a set path. The end goal was for their rover to successfully traverse a path, complete a task, and then return to the starting point. Since a real mission would not be able to be observed "live", the code for their mission needed to be complete and sent as one transmission. 

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I was truly taken aback by the engagement of the students during this activity. I have written about how learning to code is an amazing way to promote a growth mindset, and I got to see that in action here. Some students even wanted to work over their lunch breaks! I think that one of the reasons students were so engaged in this activity is that it was based off of a real situation, so the students felt that they were working on an authentic, real life problem.

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I completed this activity as the culminating project for the Space unit, but the concept of planning a mission to Mars could easily be used as the introduction to the unit as a unit-wide inquiry where students discover what they need to learn to plan a mission to Mars. We took almost 4 periods to complete this activity, with all but one being work periods.