Materials for a robotics class of 30

[RandomStyuff]

Personally, I taught the BoeBots kit and I disliked it. It is more of a electronics kit than a mechanical kit...
When I taught it, I felt very locked down. Over the course of 2 weeks (granted, 2 hours a day, 5 days a week) I pretty much stressed out all options I could think of for expansion.

VEX on the other hand, while I haven't taught it I've played around with it. In my opinion it's the perfect educational robotics kit for older kids (NXT is pretty good for younger kids, and also not too bad for highschoolers).

Kids rarely enjoy playing with wires. That's pretty much what Boebots is. The part where most of the kids had most fun was the part where they had to build the robot, and with boebots, that's 15 minutes for anyone who knows his way around a screwdriver!