Middle School Mindstorms Class Help

[iggy_gim]

Hey guys,

Thank you so much for your feedback, you've come up with ideas that I would have not thought of!

Here's what I've come up with from the various comments. Tell me how you think it would fly.

Over the years, I've found that starting with pre-built robots and giving the kids little programming challenges using different sensors works well.

That's what I thought to do for at least a couple months until they mastered programming. So I think I will be sticking to the four step process that I mentioned before. I like the idea of introducing each sensor to the robot sequentially as like a way to learn each one of them one by one.

The students grade for the unit is based on the score they get at the end on the mat.

We were wondering how we would administer a "mid-term exam and final exam grade" and I like your idea of testing how well a robot completes the task. Unfortunately we cannot grade the entire class this way as we need to count behavior and completion of hw assignments too.

just finished a Mindstorms class, albeit with younger students, and I found that using robot sumo as a final activity really engaged the kids and gave to possibility for both simple solutions and lots of iteration.

I like the idea of a sumo robot. So basically the robots are trying to push each other out of the ring? Autonomously or tele-op?

I am trying to make a final curriculum right now. Maybe I'll post it after I am done to get your input.

One last thing is now our team was invited to help organize and teach a TETRIX course at the local Police Athletic League. I was wondering what control system is best: Arduino or Mindstorms?

Thanks a lot for all of your help!!