Over the past three years we’ve purchased Lego Mindstorms kits, by making bids for enterprise funding.  At around £180 per kit, they’re expensive.

Initially, we ran lunch time sessions with only a limited number of pupils able to become involved at any one time, but this session for the first time we have enough resources to try Mindstorms with a class of twenty.  Mr Stevenson is taking the lead with one of his classes.

Teams of three pupils have so far had three one hour blocks, though in the first block only one team member was available, as the others were completing a previous project.  The teams have now settled down, with each member now clear on his or her duties.  Already, pupils have rotated, so that each has had a chance at – reading instructions, sourcing components or building the robot.

Later in the project, each teams will programme the instructions for its robot in the laptop or desktop computer, then upload the programme to the robot’s on-board computer.  There’ll then follow a period of testing and adjusting.

We’ll post photos and video recordings of the later stages of the project in due course.  Meantime, you may care to take a look at some examples of work created during lunch times -

http://www.royalhigh.edin.sch.uk/departments/departments/CDT/robots_0809.html

Jim Black