Subject:
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Re: New Civil Engineer letter
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.technic
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Date:
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Mon, 2 Jul 2001 16:43:44 GMT
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Viewed:
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891 times
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In lugnet.technic, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> But yes, I do think LEGO is more expressive than Meccano. There are more
> parts, and it can be used across a much wider range of problems. I'm biased,
> I haven't set out to *prove* it but it's what I believe to be true.
>
> Having said that, it still is more possible for the novice builder (your
> average 6 year old or 8 year old, or even 12 year old that hasn't used LEGO
> much, and thus doesn't know the idioms) to make weak structures in LEGO than
> it is in Meccano or Knex or even Znap.
Well, I had both Meccano and Lego as a kid, and I can tell you that the
Meccano didn't get a look in, past building a few things from the
instructions. I really tried, but Meccano was just so slow to construct
anything, and you couldn't really experiment with it. There was no learning
path. You either built something decent or nothing at all. There was no
playing about with simple models, then going on to more complex or stronger
structures, which is what you need for an educational system.
I know that K'nex is used in some schools, because it's cheaper and easier
to give a classful of kids a decent amount. But, as far as I know, this is
only in primary schools (in the 5-8 year old classes), as it doesn't get
very advanced.
At my secondary school for one week the entire school worked on industrial
projects (in groups made up of 12-16 year olds, with the sixth formers
acting as consultants, banks, etc), and a lot of Lego was used for making
model machinery - worm-gear driven sluice gates, lifts etc. Kids were
actually building and refining these themselves, not from plans.
As I said in loc.uk, Meccano might be good for a _demonstration_. But, the
days of teaching kids by pointing to a dusty piece of demonstration
equipment and telling them what to write about it are long gone.
Jason J Railton
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: New Civil Engineer letter
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| (...) Because you know all the idioms. To draw an analogy, I can code in C++ or Java a lot faster than I can in Lisp, because I know more idioms and patterns. That doesn't (in and of itself) make C++ *better* than Lisp, just different. You need a (...) (23 years ago, 2-Jul-01, to lugnet.technic)
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