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I just noticed that a former employer of mine, SoftWIRE, has made their
MindStorms programming curriculum available for free download. SoftWIRE is
a graphical programming extension for Visual Studio .NET that, among other
things, I added programming support for the RCX and Scout to.
I haven't installed the curriculum, and I have no idea what is in it, but my
understanding is that they hoped to teach introductory programming classes,
starting in the graphical environment to introduce concepts like variables,
loops, and other control structures visually, then gradually showing how a
scripted language provides these same features by replacing certain
graphical objects with code. They hoped that by focusing on using robots
remote-controlled by a PC, they would engage students who otherwise might
have little appetite to learn this material.
Check it out at http://www.softwire.com/ to download a free trial of
SoftWIRE and the LEGO MindStorms curriculum. You will need Microsoft Visual
Studio .NET or Visual Basic 6.0 in order to use SoftWIRE. I am also unsure
whether they ever actually released the VB6 version of the LEGO graphical
programming blocks, but they originally had announced their intention to do so.
The MindStorms project was really fun to work on, and I am glad that it is
finally seeing the light of day.
- Chris.
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