Vex curriculum suggestions

[annie1939]

I am the robotics coach at a private school with about 200 kids in the high school. I am going to try to get an engineering class in the curriculum for next year. I have to do it inexpensively and for a max of about 10 kids a semester.
We do not have any shop facilities (no lathes ,cnc machines etc). We have portable power tools only. We do happen to have 6 vex kits that are not being used. Does anyone have experience with any of the vex based programs out there? In my search, I came across the following:

• Intelitek VEX Based Curriculum - http://www.intelitek-shop.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=77

• CMU Robot Academy VEX Curriculum - http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/roboticscurriculum/vex_online/

• Autodesk vex curriculum - http://www.vexrobotics.com/edr-resources/

I am looking for something that they can work on at their own pace, is collaborative, and offers open ended challenges. But I want something with some meat to it. I don't want them just building toys to drive around. I worked with the Intelitek program over the summer, and liked the fact that it covered the mechanical principles as well as the electronics that we could apply to our competition robot. This is a college prep private school and all the kids will be taking AP classes before graduation. Will it be challenging enough?

Any suggestions or critiques out there? Obviously Project Lead the Way is out of our price range. I want a "packaged" curriculum to start with. Administration would be happier with that than having me (an retired engineer not a professional educator) develop one. I can always embellish later.

Thanks,
Ann

[Rich Kressly]

I am the robotics coach at a private school with about 200 kids in the high school. I am going to try to get an engineering class in the curriculum for next year. I have to do it inexpensively and for a max of about 10 kids a semester.
We do not have any shop facilities (no lathes ,cnc machines etc). We have portable power tools only. We do happen to have 6 vex kits that are not being used. Does anyone have experience with any of the vex based programs out there? In my search, I came across the following:

• Intelitek VEX Based Curriculum - http://www.intelitek-shop.com/product_info.php?cPath=23&products_id=77

• CMU Robot Academy VEX Curriculum - http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/roboticscurriculum/vex_online/

• Autodesk vex curriculum - http://www.vexrobotics.com/edr-resources/

I am looking for something that they can work on at their own pace, is collaborative, and offers open ended challenges. But I want something with some meat to it. I don't want them just building toys to drive around. I worked with the Intelitek program over the summer, and liked the fact that it covered the mechanical principles as well as the electronics that we could apply to our competition robot. This is a college prep private school and all the kids will be taking AP classes before graduation. Will it be challenging enough?

Any suggestions or critiques out there? Obviously Project Lead the Way is out of our price range. I want a "packaged" curriculum to start with. Administration would be happier with that than having me (an retired engineer not a professional educator) develop one. I can always embellish later.

Thanks,
Ann

Hi Ann,

I helped assemble the comparison chart for the three curriculum programs you list here for IFI. I'm one of their education consultants so feel free to contact me at rich_kressly@innovationfirst.com if you'd like to connect.

-Rich Kressly

[Trying to Help]

Ann,

One of our mentors works for Intelitek and several other FRC mentors do too. I'm going to forward a link to this post to him and hopefully, he'll be able to give you some real information.

Trying to Help

[dtengineering]

I've blogged some of the things that I do with my students at http://botshop.wordpress.com/

It is far from being an "off the shelf" curriculum, like the three you have mentioned here, but I think you'll find that any of the three, combined with your experience, will result in an effective learning experience. Just don't expect that you'll ever be able to take any one package and implement it without modification or adaptation to your situation. It will serve as a good framework, and will certainly serve to placate the administration and save you a lot of time in planning units and lessons, but you will have to make adjustments as you figure out what works best for your kids.

Mostly, however, I find that once the students start building a robotics project, they are too busy learning for me to teach.

Jason

[Dan Larochelle]

Ann,
intelitek works with Trinity High School (team 40) which is also a small private school. Please send me an email at dlarochelle@intelitek.com or call me at 603 625-8600 ext 122. I can answer all of your questions regarding intelitek's REC curriculum and I can get you in touch with Joe Pouliot, the physics teacher at Trinity. He uses our REC curriculum in his classes. Have you been to intelitek's REC link?

http://www.intelitekdownloads.com/REC/

There is lots of great info there. Please let me know if I can help. Thanks.

Dan Larochelle