Subject:
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Re: Robolab as a tool for teaching programming
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Thu, 17 Mar 2005 16:23:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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3647 times
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John,
You make some good points regarding Robolab but I’ll confess at the outset here
that I’m a big fan of Robolab. After having used Robolab with my FLL teams the
past two years I can say that it is a powerful tool that works well for teaching
general programming topics. The kids on my team are 4th and 5th graders and NQC
would be too much for all but one or two of them. Robolab is a good compromise
and allows everyone to focus on higher level requirements, which for the ages
I’m working with is a good thing.
Here’s an example of how to do nested loops:
I’ve shown the inner loop on a slightly lower horizontal line. This took me
about a minute to write and the kids on my team could also write this in less
than five minutes. The same could not be said for the lines of code in your NQC
version.
I’m not advocating Robolab for all RCX programming tasks. It works well for what
I use it for: teaching programming to kids. NQC would be more appropriate for
7th graders and up in my opinion, but even they could benefit from using
Robolab.
If anyone wants to see more sample Robolab programs I have some posted on the
web site I maintain for the robotics program at my son’s school:
www.haciendarobotics.com.
Steve
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: Robolab as a tool for teaching programming
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| Hi Steve, (...) all the programs you have are well-structured, not spaghetti-code as one would expect for flowcharts at least some of the time. I.e. loops and conditions are properly nested, there are no jumps to some completely different place. Is (...) (19 years ago, 18-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Robolab as a tool for teaching programming
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| (...) None of the 4th and 5th grade students I have had an opportunity to know would find NQC to be too much for them. I'm curious how you came to the conclusion that it would be "too much" for the kids on your team to understand or use. (...) Could (...) (19 years ago, 18-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics, FTX)
| | | Re: Robolab as a tool for teaching programming
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| This thread is getting a bit long so in the interest of brevity I'm combining my replies to several posts in this one message. (...) Thanks for the kind words, Juergen. This structure is not imposed by Robolab but I'm a programmer by trade so I try (...) (19 years ago, 19-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics, FTX)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Robolab as a tool for teaching programming
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| (...) I would agree, but it was you who said "Programming with Robolab is much like creating a flow-chart" and "if you really want to know where spaghetti code comes from, we should talk to those who think flow-charting is a waste of time" here: (...) (19 years ago, 16-Mar-05, to lugnet.robotics, FTX)
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