Dear Wink Forum,
I was interested in using Wink in a Year 7 Digital Technologies program with 28 students in a class. I think Wink has a lot to offer these students in programming a robot and seeing instant programming results offering a concrete learning experience. There is also great potential in the problems you can set the students to solve. I have purchased four Winks for Digital Technology staff and myself to play with.
I was interested in whether other Forum members have used Wink in a classroom context and what their experience. In particular how did the students manage the download cables.
Many thanks,
Mr Pengilley.
Wink in the Classroom
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Re: Wink in the Classroom
Hello Mr Pengilley,
Thanks for the post and good question. I'm always interested to hear feedback as well. It won't help in the short term but our Wink 2 units will be available in the next few weeks that move the programmer hardware onto the robot itself and eliminates the ribbon cable - now just a direct connection with a USB cable. From the feedback I've received, it sounds like the classes do fine but it's been communicated that if there was one thing we could fix, it's the ribbon cable so we made it happen.
If you received your units recently, you should notice that one of the pins on the programmer is clipped. This is to prevent an issue that came up recently where the robots could be damaged if the ribbon was connected reversed and at the same time, only connected to the top row of pins on the robot. Clipping the pin on the programmer prevents the problem from happening even if connected incorrectly. If your programmers have all 10 pins present, please have a look at the advisory we posted recently and go ahead and clip your programmer pins as indicated as preventative measure.
Link: http://www.plumgeek.com/programmer-advisory.html
Another suggestion, as described near the bottom of the advisory above - is to make a colored dot on the top side of both ends of the ribbon cable, then instruct the students to make sure the color dot is facing upward when connecting to the robot. This seems to go a long way to getting students to correctly connect the cable so they are successful when attempting to upload code.
I welcome your feedback as you get started working with them. We're always looking to improve the experience over time whether that's improving the robots or documentation, etc.
Thanks again and welcome to the forum!
-Kevin
Thanks for the post and good question. I'm always interested to hear feedback as well. It won't help in the short term but our Wink 2 units will be available in the next few weeks that move the programmer hardware onto the robot itself and eliminates the ribbon cable - now just a direct connection with a USB cable. From the feedback I've received, it sounds like the classes do fine but it's been communicated that if there was one thing we could fix, it's the ribbon cable so we made it happen.
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
If you received your units recently, you should notice that one of the pins on the programmer is clipped. This is to prevent an issue that came up recently where the robots could be damaged if the ribbon was connected reversed and at the same time, only connected to the top row of pins on the robot. Clipping the pin on the programmer prevents the problem from happening even if connected incorrectly. If your programmers have all 10 pins present, please have a look at the advisory we posted recently and go ahead and clip your programmer pins as indicated as preventative measure.
Link: http://www.plumgeek.com/programmer-advisory.html
Another suggestion, as described near the bottom of the advisory above - is to make a colored dot on the top side of both ends of the ribbon cable, then instruct the students to make sure the color dot is facing upward when connecting to the robot. This seems to go a long way to getting students to correctly connect the cable so they are successful when attempting to upload code.
I welcome your feedback as you get started working with them. We're always looking to improve the experience over time whether that's improving the robots or documentation, etc.
Thanks again and welcome to the forum!
-Kevin
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