What ability level are your
students? I believe that Mindstorms caters for a much larger range of
intelligences;
In primary schools I feel that a
gradual introduction is fantastic. How about in grades 1-3 just have the
R2-D2 in the corner and bring him out to show the kids, let them see what
they can do with it, in year three let them build him. Now with the new
Dark side kit you can also use that. At this early stage you just want to
get the kids interested but not bog them down with the complexities.
In upper primary you can introduce
the Scout to the students and work their way up to programming it through
the computer.
In high school you can start by
introducing the RCX brick and the Mindstorms programmer. Kids can make
projects from the book or compete in the missions set on the Internet. As
the students progress through high school you can use the extra sensors
that Robolab offers and introduce LabView.
At the end of year 10 the students
could even start to program the brick using Visual Basic and work on true
control.
What do you want the kids to do? Robolab
can offer a greater flexibility in items available and pricing.
Robolab has been marketed for
schools. You can get the site licences for the software cheap, you can buy
designed for 4, 8 and 16 students to use and you can buy individual
components including sensors.
For these reasons Robolab makes an
excellent addition to your class allowing your students to explore many
avenues not covered in Mindstorms.
There is just 2 arguments either way
for each kit. But you may wonder what I think is the best way to go,
well...
I think that buying a mixture
of both kits provides the best solution for your class!!
As cost is a big issue I believe that
the best way to start is have about 4 kits, 2 Mindstorms, 2 Robolab, with
the temperature and rotation sensor. This is a hefty outlay but in a
couple of years time buy a couple of more kits to expand the number. To
begin with you may have to structure your class so that some are working
on the LEGO while other have another activity, but as the years pass you
will gradually pick up the numbers.
NOTE: In the jump from
Mindstorms 1.0 to 1.5 the kit included some excellent new pieces. To
obtain these pieces LEGO sells an upgrade kit for about US $25 and I
cannot see any reason that you cannot buy them for your Robolab kits which
I believe do not include the pieces. Check out the product section at http://www.legomindstorms.com.
