Materials for a robotics class of 30

[rahilm]

Our school piloted a robotics curriculum last year with 2 classes, and expanded it to 4 this year.

I'll start off by saying that this class primarily targets students who aren't doing so well in other science class. The aim of the class is to help those students understand concepts of physics through robotics.

With that said, our primary tool is NXT kits, with NXC software instead of MindStorms. We've written some custom programs where they can change velocities, accelerations, etc. and combine that with some Vernier sensing hardware to help them see what velocity and acceleration actually is in relation to each other. They explore other concepts similarly.

We tried incorporating FTC into the class last year, but some of the stuff just seemed to high-level, so we had to abandon that. The plan is to try once again this year, and see how well it works out.