As an educator, I've had the pleasure of teaching robotics multiple times. However, my recent foray into the world of VEX has been a unique journey. Beyond supporting DP students with VEX V5, my experience with VEX was limited. So, when my school decided to jump aboard the VEX ship, my enthusiasm was palpable. Here was my chance to get hands-on with these captivating machines.
However, the irony wasn't lost on me when I struggled to find a way to integrate VEX IQ into our curriculum. It wasn't until a productive coaching meeting with the Year 7 math team that we hit upon a brilliant idea: use VEX IQ to apply students' knowledge of angles in a fun, interactive way. I envisioned transforming the VEX IQ robots into little drawing cars, much akin to the pen blocks used in Scratch.
The idea resonated with the math team, and we were off! However, the journey wasn't without hurdles. As I scoured the internet for information on using VEX IQ for drawing robots in education, I found a dearth of resources. The challenge was twofold: firstly, there were no pen holder building instructions to suit our needs, and secondly, those that did exist required extra building bits not included in the VEX IQ Classroom bundles.
Enter the 3D printer. I adapted a VEX IQ building base and customized a pen holder to accommodate our markers. The second issue was a tad more complicated. The pen holder installed off-center resulted in distorted drawings when the robot made turns. After numerous trials, I discovered the solution—you need to place the pen holder exactly in the middle of two motors.
Given the lack of resources on this topic, I decided to create a guide on this mini project, including instruction sheets and tutorial videos. I've planned two challenges for our students.
The first challenge is to draw regular shapes—such as triangles, squares, rectangles, and hexagons.
The second challenge is a real test of their knowledge—students will need to calculate angles and use regular shapes to create patterns.
I'm sharing everything here and hoping to make learning innovative and more accessible.
Tutorial:
Worksheets:
