Lego Mindstorm

When I first approached the Legos Mindstorm kit, it was with a little reluctance. However, I was asked to teach a robotics coursed using the kit as its primary material. I went into it with my two girls, both of whom are avid Lego fans. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised. The software support is truly excellent, the language is very easy to use, and you can do some really interesting and informative things with it. After a little tinkering, I came up with a week long course for 7th through 9th grade level students, and it was a great success. We made some very sophisticated and interesting robots, and three local TV stations came in to shoot the class and students and we ended up with a nice spot of television notoriety as well as a lot of happy kids. The only gripe I have with Legos is their tendency to fall apart on impact. However, you don't get anything broken that way. It takes a little while to get the basic models together, which is fine with a classroom of kids- it keeps their hands occupied for quite a while. But the resulting robots are fun and they really can inspire lots of experimenting without a huge investment in hardware. My $0.02 has been inserted.

Cheers!

Chip Shults My robotics, space and CGI web page -