A few students have expressed frustration at not doing more building during our WRECK sessions. The primary reason for this is really a lack of time - having only 40 minutes with the kids makes serious tinkering impossible. Couple that with the small number of kits available (right now I struggle to keep a maximum of four students per NXT set) and the fact that we share these kits with two separate groups and I think you see my dilemma.
My solution - although not perfect - has been to prepare a robot model ahead of time, and then allow the students to program the behavior during the session. Our base design consists of two motorized drive wheels and one idle wheel for steering/stability. The construction is fairly simple and the robot is sturdy enough to last through some mishaps (intentional or not). I've also tried to allow for future expansion by keeping all four sides free for sensors.
Our first "lab" session was designed to get the kids familiar with running the NXT software on the laptops and downloading programs to the robot. We learned how to move the motors and also how two different driving wheels are used to steer by varying the power to each drive. We also covered program loops. The kids did great and seemed excited to see the robots respond to their programs. Of course there was much laughing and hysteria as robots were accidentally run into walls/people/etc.
For our next lab, I will add a sensor to our Robot base which will naturally lead into programming decision statements. Initially we'll probably just use touch sensor and allow the kids to figure out how to get the robot to respond to an obstacle.
I'm also starting to brainstorm ideas for our "final challenge" to be held at the end of the school year. Since we're only using the stock NXT kit, it can't be too complicated. If anyone has an idea, please post a comment or send on some email.
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