For the past few years, all the students at Garneau Elementary School have been doing robotics. If there is one moment of the week that the young people of this school in the Centre-Sud of Montreal do not want to miss, it is the one spent with their robots.
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Maeva, “six and a half years old”, had just explained how the little Dash robot she was programming with a friend was going to move on the floor and follow a very specific path, “like a figure eight, but upside down”.
It didn’t go as planned. Leaning over their tablet, Maeva and Mariana noticed that the robot “is not listening” and urged the journalist to come back in a few minutes for another demonstration.
Like all the other students at the Garneau school, the little ones do robotics for about an hour a week. In this school located in the Centre-Sud district of Montreal, this is the project we chose to mobilize students and teachers.
Joël Beaudoin explains that the robotics period he does each week with his students from 1D year is a learning opportunity: you have to measure the distance the robot will have to travel, know how to read the programming blocks that tell the robot sometimes to turn, sometimes to back up.
Photo Martin Tremblay, THE PRESS
Teacher Joël Beaudoin, with a student
Young people, says the prof, realize “that there are different ways of getting to a goal”.
It will look for students who sometimes do less well. They are attracted to robots, they are cute. Every week, they ask me when we’re doing it and when I tell them we don’t have time, they’re really disappointed.
Joël Beaudoin, teacher at Garneau Elementary School
The first robots at the Garneau school were purchased in the wake of the Digital Action Plan set up by Quebec in 2018. However, the teacher who had set up the project left for another school, and the robots are ” dormant”.
Teacher Denis Gosselin picked up the ball. “I’ve had an interest in it since I was little. We said to ourselves: we are going to bring this to life, these robots,” explains the person in charge of teacher training.
The school principal, Jean-François Lafleur, insisted that “everyone get on board”, students and teachers alike.
Photo Martin Tremblay, THE PRESS
Jean-François Lafleur, principal of Garneau elementary school, with students doing robotics
There had to be continuity from one level to the next, and no student would be left behind. The Garneau school is at the maximum of the scale of deprivation of Quebec, “10 out of 10”, says the director.
“We must not hide it, we are in a multiethnic sector, where parents cannot always help children with their homework”, says Bernard Bazouamon, president of the school’s governing board.
According to the Montreal school service center, 70% of the students at this school come from allophone families.
When it comes to robotics, everything is done at school, observes Denis Gosselin.
Photo Martin Tremblay, THE PRESS
Denis Gosselin, teacher at Garneau elementary school in Montreal
“I have been teaching here since 2008 and I quickly understood that it was the children who had to be involved. You have to work with them,” explains Mr. Gosselin.
Challenges for robots… and children
In the class of 3e year of Bruno Vincent, these are drones that the students learn to guide in a course. The machine must go around boxes and pass under a stick.
Penelope says she likes handling the drone, “telling ourselves that we can do it and working as a team,” she explains.
Photo Martin Tremblay, THE PRESS
In sixth grade, students have recently had access to a 3D printer.
That students collaborate is precisely one of the objectives.
Each team is made up of a programmer, people who are going to measure, they have a logbook to do, and they change roles every week.
Bruno-Vincent
In a team of students, it’s hard to talk about. “What happens if the drone drops the boxes? asks a student. These drones are not bilingual: how do you say “turn right, but in English?” asks Émerik, 9 years old.
Photo Martin Tremblay, THE PRESS
The Dash robot is one of the robots used at the Garneau school.
In all, the school invested approximately $80,000 in equipment for its project. We now have about ten robots per level, computers, tablets. Dash, Sphero and Blue-Bot are getting ready to go back to their boxes for the summer holidays, but one thing is certain: they won’t be gathering dust for long.