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!!

[lemiant]

Originally Posted by iggy_gim

I was wondering what control system is best: Arduino or Mindstorms?

I haven't ever used an arduino to control a Tetrix kit, but I have used the mindstorms and I know that it is very well integrated because that is the official set up used in FTC. RobotC for Tetrix+mindstorms also generally just works without much fiddling, which is nice.

[Dale]

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.

I'd propose you have a series of challenges, not necessarily related to one another, with points available for each one. Students would then optimize their grade by picking which challenges to do. Your midterm grades would then be a snapshot of where they were at that point. You could also make it clear that effort and behavior count for X%.

Not sure why you'd do homework since this is such a self-paced hands-on class. If you really had to do so I guess they could write reports, create brochures or do presentations on some robotics/engineering topic.

[iggy_gim]

Not sure why you'd do homework since this is such a self-paced hands-on class. If you really had to do so I guess they could write reports, create brochures or do presentations on some robotics/engineering topic.

I agree Homework is useless, but the principal made herself clear that there needs to be assignments given as it is still a graded class. So far I've just given them assignments to complete little logic worksheets at home.

I haven't ever used an arduino to control a Tetrix kit, but I have used the mindstorms and I know that it is very well integrated because that is the official set up used in FTC. RobotC for Tetrix+mindstorms also generally just works without much fiddling, which is nice.

It's pretty easy and more cost effective (Arduino - $25, Brick - $410). Plus you can use LabView for Arduino which is similar to the LEGO IDE.