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I have been rather absent lately from NSTA Forum. My focus lately has been learning the LEGO Mindstorms, but no new articles for my website. Then this week I was amazed to notice my website had over 850 views and then yesterday it went over 1000 for the first time.

I will have to get busy on some new material.

ScienceGuyOrg Website

Bill Kuhl

Bill, I LOVE the Lego Mindstorms - I learned how to work with them a multiple day workshop a few years ago with my youngest son. I tried opening a robotics club at school with kits provided by the district, but it fizzled after a while. I originally had over 30+ kids show up, but without a student who knew what they were doing, they would get frustrated. I was doing it a lunch, but I usually have to do other things during that time also, so couldn't give them my full attention. Any suggestions on getting a club up and keep it running?

Hi Nancy, I am a real beginner at LEGO Mindstorms. I have been really surprised by how many people have said the kids pick up on this so fast when I see them struggle with projects I think are simple. It would seem to me that more than one person is needed to help with the club but I know how that goes. My approach to everything lately has been to find the very basics of an idea and build on that. With the LEGO's I see that learning what the basic pieces are and how to identify them helps when trying to build sample robots from books.

FIRST Robotics has a structured program for using the LEGO robots. You might want to check out their site. http://www.usfirst.org/ Good luck.

Bill! I have missed you! We are having our very first Robotics club here at my middle school based on the FIRST Lego robotics. Nancy, I feel your pain. We have had mixed success. The students do pretty well with the robotics. They seem to be able to build from the schematics just fine, but It takes them a little longer to figure out the actual programming the robots to perform the tasks aka missions. We see our numbers stay around 20 each night we meet, but find the nights we are working on the presentation and research students are less excited to stay. We meet two nights a week for 3 hours, so we tend to get more done than we would with shorter chunks of time. Students can also come before school or during lunches, but that just isn’t enough time. By the time they get the materials out, the time is up and they have to pack it back up. There are two of us adults that are “mentors” to the program, so that helps keep the students focused and on task. They all love to build and play with the legos, so we finally had to sit them down and tell them we have to get the presentation down, so we didn’t let them go back to using the robots until after they had the research and presentation completed. One book that has really helped us out in terms of being more successful with the club has been “Getting Started with Lego Robotics: A Guide for K-12 Educators”. http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Started-LEGO-Robotics-Educators/dp/1564842983/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1355447750&sr=8-2&keywords=lego+robotics This book gave us a lot of really good ideas not only on the club and maintaining interest as well as the nuts and bolts of legos themselves. The other books my students found helpful once they had the basics down were the Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 series, “Discovery Book”; “The Mayan Adventure” and the “King’s Treasure.” http://www.amazon.com/The-LEGO-MINDSTORMS-Discovery-Book/dp/1593272111/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1355447750&sr=8-4&keywords=lego+robotics There is another book “Winning Design!” http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Design-MINDSTORMS-Patterns-Competition/dp/1430229640/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1355448283&sr=1-1&keywords=lego+robotics+Winning+Design The nice part of the books is they help students get over hurdles and provide enrichment for those needing more of a challenge. I look forward to hearing how others are making their robotics clubs successful.

Hi Sandy I have one of those books and two others that I find helpful. This is a great website with detailed instructions for Mindstorms projects: Nxt Programs..

I was an observer at a tournament last Saturday of FLL competition, pictures and video are on my ScienceGuyOrg Facebook page SG Facebook...

After working with Mindstorms myself I was really impressed with what the kids have done.

I can relate the Mindstorms to so many things; for example my Prius has traction control that senses when the tires are slipping. It seems to work well but I understand old versions did not work as well, no doubt fine tuning the software was part of the improvement.

Bill Kuhl