Remember a few years back when rumors flew that LEGO was cancelling the Mindstorms line? If I remember LEGO came within inches but didn't cross the border. Whew
I recieved a Mindstorms kit for christmas in either '99 or 2000. I played around with it for a while and then after a few simple carts kinda lost interest in it. Meanwhile my dad and one of my cousin built 3 axis arms and the like. I thought it was cool but never thought I could do it. My dad pretty much fell in love with it though and the following year my school had an FLL team. I immediately fell in love with FLL.
That being said, I think the kits are too open ended for the 9-12 age range. Having a competition like FLL however students are given something to work towards and are rewarding in a competitive atmosphere for their work, amoung their peers.
Also I believe that Mindstorms could be used much like Vex, if you get people to realize what complex things you can do. For example take
this (its at the bottom of the newsletter) Mindstorms robot capable of moving 60 pounds! I consider any FLL team who can get everything on the table done 90% of the time to have created a piece of engineering equal to an FRC team who could cap a vision tetra 90% of the time.
(The only sad thing about this forum is it inevitably gets less traffic than the general forum, so most likely this topic will not be as well developed. Sigh...
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