Materials required
- Playing sounds slides
- Otto Starter robot
- Computers with internet and/or bluetooth connection
Optional materials
- Make Music Card
- Playing sounds Worksheets
Learning Objectives
- Recognize robotic systems in everyday life and be able to reason about how they help.
- Know that robots use algorithms to perform tasks.
- Write and upload programs that control the robot.
- Modify an existing program to add new functionality to the robot.
- Analyse and debug existing code to identify and fix errors, and explain how the code works.
- Identify the problem to be solved and develop a plan to address it using the Otto robot components.
- Create a project that combines robotics with another creative discipline.
How can Otto play sounds?
The class starts with the question “How can Otto make sounds?”. Allow students to share their theories before moving to the explanation in the second slide. This question can be complemented with another one like: “How can sounds be useful for robots or machines?”
In the second slide there is a very short explanation about what the buzzer component is and how it works.
That explanation can be expanded adding that:
The buzzer component consists of a small plastic housing with an integrated speaker. When an electric current is passed through the buzzer, it causes a thin piece metal inside to vibrate, creating sound waves and generating an audible tone.
Feel free to expand this explanation with other learning resources about how the buzzer works.
Activity: Exploring melodies
Using the buzzer, Otto can play tones in different frequencies to play melodies. In the word blocks app you will find many coding blocks to generate tones and create melodies from scratch, but also you will find a list of predefined melodies to play. In this activity, allow students to play different options from the [play melody] block to listen to the different variations they have access to using the buzzer to play sounds.
You will find the [play melody] in the Sound section of the word blocks app, in the sub-section RTTTL (stands for Ring Tone Text Transfer Language).
Both blocks in the section are basically the same. In the first one there is a dropdown list with the different options and in the second block you can write the name by yourself.
Activity: Building with notes
Besides predefined melodies, we can create our own melodies from scratch using the [play note] blocks. By combining multiple notes with different durations and silences, we can create melodies. Here is a brief explanation of each [play note] block:
Plays a music figure (that determines the duration of the sound) with a frequency value (in Hz; that determines how high or low the sound will be).
This block is like the previous one, but instead of determining the pitch of the sound by a value in Hz, it uses a predefined set of music notes; those notes are equivalent to some specific values in HZ.
This block is like the previous one but allows you to play 4 notes one after the other in a sequence with the same music figure.
In slide 4, there are the first six tones of the classic Happy Birthday song, guide students to copy and test the melody on their own robots: 
After testing the melody, you could notice that it effectively sounds like the classic happy birthday song that we all know, but the sounds move too fast between them, here is where the [stop] block becomes relevant. On music, it is important to play silences between notes, in Word Blocks we can get this by combining the [stop] block with a [wait] block with a small delay. Place that combination between each note, and try again:
After placing [stop] + [wait] blocks between each note and testing again, the improvement in the melody should be clear.
Expansion: Complete the melody
The previous activity can be expanded by allowing students to complete the melody on their own. There are two different approaches for this:
- Allow students to experiment and complete the melody by themselves. You could allow them to use the internet to find information about notes and/or frequencies they could need.
- Give the whole melody and ask students to add their “own touch”
The whole melody is available in the file happy-birthday.otto. You can allow students to copy the melody and then ask them to modify any part of it. It could be to change the speed or add new tones at the end. Maybe add another component of Otto like the lights.
Lesson Evaluation
- Students shared their theories on how Otto can make sounds.
- Students understood how to access and use the RTTTL blocks.
- Students were introduced to creating melodies from scratch using note blocks in the word blocks app.
- Students attempted to complete the melody independently.
- Students demonstrated an understanding of how the buzzer works to produce sound.
- Students exhibited creativity and problem-solving skills in creating and customizing their melodies.
