It’s November, 2016, and Lego Mindstorms has replaced NXT with EV3. I’ve just finished helping a friend coach two FLL (First Lego League competition) teams. I’m very impressed by how much 4th and 5th graders learned. I recommend the combination of Lego robotics and FLL structure.The big advantage of Lego robotics is, every kid is already an expert in Legos. They took the guide book (pages of pictures, since Lego is international and uses a minimum of words) and a couple of boxes of pieces and they assembled the base robot in about two hours. Then we started teaching them the programming language and the robots started running around the table, pushing things, pulling them. They learned to use touch sensors, ultrasonic distance sensors, color sensors, motor feedback sensors, and a gyro sensor. They made their robots find lines, follow lines, recognize colors, turn by precise angles, raise and lower objects, and follow complex paths.If you are not familiar with the FLL competitions, teams of 2–10 kids, from grades 4–8, helped by 1–2 coaches (plus as many friendly mentors and advisors as you can find) build and program robots to attempt missions.
FLL designs a table, a bunch of stuff that goes on the table in carefully selected locations, and around 15 missions that can be performed for points. The successful completion of each mission is carefully defined. How to accomplish each mission is up to the team. The order of the missions is up to the team. How many missions to attempt is up to the team. Come tournament day, the team gets 2.5 minutes on the table, to attempt their missions and to earn points. Time limits are strict. Each team gets three runs. There are around 200 teams in the Rochester and finger Lakes region. Our tournament had 26 teams. There were 9 tournaments in our region in November. Ten total teams advance to the regional finals. Of those, 2 teams will advance to the national finals in St. Louis. There are no age brackets. The object is for the kids to learn to build robots, for the kids to design their robots, for the kids to learn to program, for the kids to program their robots, and for the kids to learn problem solving by attempting the missions.
As adults, we helped. But part of the tournament is a Technology Review, where judges quiz the kids on who thought of this, why they did that, who programmed this part of the code, etc. The kids learn by doing, not by watching adults.FLL emphasizes a set of 8 core values from coopertition to graceful professionalism, to sharing and teamwork, to having fun. And there’s a research project that’s largely independent of the robotics.What can I say? Some kids were less involved. Some were super involved and learned a bunch. Some missions worked at home and failed in the tournament. One robot completely froze, did nothing, and we got a zero for that run. Kids were in tears. We figured out it was a defective part and told them it’s not their fault. And they all want to do it again next year. And so do all their coaches. We learned a lot from other teams at the tournament. We’ll be better next year.Beware, this is addictive. But if you tend toward an addictive personality, this is way better than the usual addictions :-)Bottom line, measure of success: More than 1,000 4th-8th graders, just in our region, most in at least their second year, learning about team work, research, presentations, design, programming, and problem solving.
Oh, and did I mention it’s international? What could better fit the techie part of Quora’s international community?Lego Mindstorms are pretty reasonable as far as robot platforms go. It's definitely a good choice and is seen from Elementary School through High School (at least in a few counties in Northern Virginia).LabView is a graphical programming environment, but I can't say whether kids would immediately understand how to use it./) and Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc/).Arduino is the cheapest of the bunch and you dive straight into breadboards and wires for most things.There's also a french company that builds a single purpose line following robot. /catalog/pr...Robotics are an awesome way to get kids involved in technology, especially if you can keep the tasks short, reasonable and fun.While I love the Mindstorms kit, it can be a bit overwhelming. There are a lot of little pieces, it's not always easy to know how they go together. Building the Lego part gets in the way of playing with the Robot part.
I know kids hate to hear this, but see if you can make them wait until they are at least 12. Just because they are "into" Lego does not always translated into "they are ready for Mindstorms."A new player in the education field is the iRobot Create. It is basically a Roomba (robot vacuum cleaner) without the vaccuum cleaner. This lets you skip the "build" part (that I found so hard, cuz I'm a software geek and not into hardware) and go directly to the "program the robot" part. I'd look into that very seriously. It works out of the box, which is of course very engaging for anyone, but espcially kids. Later you can move up to programming with a real language. STEM and 21st-century skills are quickly becoming essential for the careers of tomorrow – but teaching these subjects and skills can be challenging due to their abstract nature. Now, you can transform abstract STEM concepts into tangible teaching experiences using the hands-on approach of LEGO® Education. Students will experience science, technology, engineering and mathematics first-hand through innovative, engaging tools that place them in the center of the learning environment.
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