Subject:
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Tutorials and materials for teaching Lego robotics
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics.edu
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Date:
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Fri, 29 Oct 1999 02:33:20 GMT
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Reply-To:
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tking@togetherNOMORESPAM.net
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Viewed:
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3003 times
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NOTE: This discussion started in lugnet.robotics.rcx.nqc
when Mark Overmars in the Netherlands asked "What would we
like to see added to his RcxCC (Rcx Command Center for NQC)?"
But this ended up being an example of the Education-oriented
questions that didn't have a real 'home' until now. So, here
we go----------->>
Mark, even though it's "Not Quite RcxCC", are you open to adding
more 'features' in your tutorial "Programming Lego Robots
using NQC" ?? (Looking for URL... mmmm..) found at:
http://www.cs.uu.nl/people/markov/lego/index.html
This is more related to the 'Education' stuff we've been
talking about (and will be talking about more in lugnet.robotics.edu
I hope). I hope we will end up with a variety of contributed
material that can be reused by people learning/teaching/enabling
Robotics.
Can you talk a little about how you use the tutorial you wrote in
your school? (University, actually). What other materials would you
suggest if there was some repository or list of pointers to material
that would be useful in teaching??
About the Tutorial, RcxCode and RxcCC/NQC:
I spent 3 hours Wednesday helping 4 of my Grandchildren learn more
about robotics and programming. We've been doing this for about 4 weeks.
HONEST! I'm using this as a way to talk about 'how kids learn stuff'. I
Promise not to tell you all about what my Grandchildren do every week!
Anyway. Last week they had gotten a machine
approximately like the 'Top Secret' design to run and not fall off the
table, using RcxCode. This week we stripped it down to the light-sensor
based type you use in the Tutorial. Then, as usual, we did separate
one-on-one sessions of about 1/2 hour each, using the same hardware.
I stayed with RcxCode drag-drop for 3 year old Noah and 6 year old Ben.
Noah got to understand how to drag/drop OnFor and Reverse, and got the
machine to do what he told it to do, in a straight line. He managed to set
it up and download it using the mouse himself. (I learned some more about
"Fine Motor Skills", and turned the mouse sensitivity way down).
Ben reads some and counts well, and had no problem doing from-scratch
programs in RcxCode. He got a straight move and followed it with a left
turn, and adjusted the turn to about 90 degrees. I asked him to make a square,
and he said "Just run it 4 times!". I told him "If you can think of a way to
do it, then probably the computer has a way to do that". I showed him the Repeat
block and he got that going fast, and showed that one off in the Kitchen...
THEN I installed RcxCC (1 Easy Diskette!) and got it running during Tea Time.
Sarah (8) and Elizabeth (10) graduated to NQC under RcxCC. I was very happy
with how that went. I made a keyboard template, but they quickly learned the
F5 F6 compile-download. I thought the onscreen Run was way cool, but they
still love to push RUN on the robot and watch it take off.
Sarah got up to making a square run, and variations, with Repeat and so on. I
provoked some compile errors, and they got that concept pretty fast. The Macros for
OUT_A and so on were a little mysterious for them. We learned about #define and
we #defined LEFT and RIGHT and used them. Sarah
wanted her machine to be an "Emergency Vehicle", and remembered the Red and Green
LED's I had on a brick. So we added another task. She seemed to immediately accept
that if we needed to "do two things at once" we needed "another task". So we
wrote 'blinker', which controlled the back-to-back LED's plugged on top of output B.
She liked the sound of "While FOREVER" in Blinker, after we #defined FOREVER true.
Last week, she wanted the LED's to blink 'faster' than the 100 Ms RcxCode wait
would allow. She was happy to find she had 1/100 of a second to work with! So the
machine ran its programmed path, with the red and green lights blinking furiously
on top. At the end, she changed the code to wait 2 seconds after the vehicle stopped
before doing "stop blinker".
Elizabeth wanted to use the light sensor, and we started with the first section of
the tutorial section V.Sensors but used the light sensor and the paper track to
have the machine run forward and stop on black. She did pretty well extending that
to turn left on black and go forward again. She was a little impatient and I had to
encourage her to "Stop, slow down, and think like a Computer", and walk thru her code.
I wouldn't 'just fix it for her'. She got the robot following the inside of the track
and everyone thought that was cool. It was pretty jumpy, and we just started to
discuss the concepts of the geometry and time-constants of what was happening. Next
week we'll pick up on that.
OK, sorry.. that was longer than I expected! All this is aimed at the question: what
is the right kind and level of tutorial material, and suggested projects that we
could provide?? There is this VERY wide range of people who can productively use
MindStorms. Soon I will be working with several 5th to 8th grade kids. They will
be able to handle mechanical and programming concepts a ways above those I just
described. I would like to document and share the stuff I develop with them.
So, Mark, tell us some about your experiences and students!
I think I'll copy this over to lugnet.robotics.edu and after that we should
probably continue this over there, since I'm already off-topic and cross-posting
and probably headed to lugnet.jail
Regards,
Terry King ...In The Woods In Vermont
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