After weeks of working with our little Edison robots, something has become very apparent.  Both planning and patience are essential for success. As the tasks students are attempting become increasingly complex, so too must their preparation, perseverance and collaboration.  Simply dragging and dropping algorithms, hoping for a desired result, has often led to confusion and frustration in groups.  Additionally, group members were arguing among themselves as each team member would interject his/her ideas intermittently.  We had to have a plan, literally!  I asked the kids to sketch out the route they’d like Edison to take, BEFORE building the program on the laptop.  With pencil and paper (old school), the groups had to first map out the route, with labeled distances, event wait times and rotational directions in degrees.  Using these “road maps” students then tried to match their plans with appropriate algorithms.  Not only have the kids been more successful with their intended programming, but when things go wrong they can go back to their sketches and zero-in on a specific area to “de-bug”.  Because there is one agreed upon “map”, there is much less arguing when things go wrong.  The teams blame the plan, rather than each other.