This is a guest post from Amy Serbus, Media Assistant at the Kimball Elementary School Library. Need a Mini Grant to purchase materials or try an interesting new program at your library? Apply today! 

Students at KES have had a lot of fun playing with and learning coding from our new robots, Dash and Dot! Through various apps on an iPad, they are learning to program the robots to communicate with each other and perform tasks such as bringing messages to their teacher, play the xylophone, tell jokes on command and so much more. When using the apps, students can program, or code, the robots by connecting blocks with specific commands. For example, if you want Dash to tell a joke, you start with a block that tells him to “wait”, then listen for voice command of knock, knock, then say “who’s there”, etc. It teaches students the basics of coding and how specific and important each step is.