5 Quick Ideas for Integrating Robots with Books
Currently, our library makerspace has two robots – The Ozobot and Cubelets. Click on the links for reviews of each. One day a week, our library makerspace goes technical and these robots delight and challenge our students. This year, our focus has been to integrate the library makerspace activities with literature. So here are 5 quick ideas for integrating robots with literature.
1. Story writing:
Robots can help tell stories. The students loved getting Ozobot to act out their story, combining words with drawing and codes. Initially they copied my example, but soon their imaginations were running wild with ideas for stories.
2. Characters:
The Cubelets have a specific challenge card for storybook robots, asking students to create a robot that looks like a character from their favourite book. This was challenging but lots of fun and students had to work together.
The Ozobot can be made to look like a story character with simple dress-ups made from a strip of paper wrapped around the robot body.
3. Mazes:
Our maze book collection is always popular and mazes pose an interesting challenge when coding and building robots. This free printable maze from Research Parent is great for no-tech coding and also works perfectly with Ozobot.
Building a maze for the Cubelet involved a combination of empty copy paper boxes, chairs, tables and the usual maze of people during library rush hour (lunchtime).
4. Animals:
One of the Cubelet challenge cards asked our little robot builders to make an animal robot. We have a particular title this worked well with – Zoobots: Wild Robots Inspired by Real Animals, which inspired the students. Snakes were popular.
5. Dancing:
Our large collection of dance books – from Darcy Bussell’s Magic Ballerina to the eternally popular Dancers of the World, Dance Australia magazine and our large non-fiction dance collection. Did you know robots can dance? Well ours can. 
The Ozobot has a special app to help it dance – you’ll need an iPad with Ozobot Groove installed and the students had heaps of fun with the Cubelets and lego, adding spinning arms and wiggling heads.
Bonus: Robot Books:
Our library has a great collection of coding, robotings and technology themed titles, both fictional and non-fiction. Hello Ruby:Adventures in Coding is a great title, especially when combining robotics and computing with story. The Look Inside titles are also popular and I love the format, lift-outs and bright colours of Robotpedia.
I’m always looking for more ideas for combining robots with literature and reading, so please share any in the comments.
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