This is a lovely writeup of a recent workshop I ran.  We did BeeBots with the young ones for about an hour in the morning, and then spent the rest of the day with the older kids building and programming LEGO mindstorms robots.

http://littlemeninmylibrary.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/robotics-workshop/

Source: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8239/8640763955_80e73aa17d.jpg

The Robot Wave activity has always been my favourite and this time it was captured on video 

LEGO MINDSTORMS from Tracey L on Vimeo.

Source: http://vimeo.com/63884094

This new setup holds 12 BeeBots, 6 mats, spare batteries, BeeBot rulers, pens etc.  Everything I need to do a session in class :)

Adriano took the initial designs I had in Making Music with the NXT and improved on them.  His design actively pulls up on the lever so that the mallet comes down quickly.  More force and you don't have to wait for gravity :)

Can't wait to see what else he comes up with :)

Rob Widger (Global LEGO Master Trainer) led the sessions and was fantastic, and the excitement on the faces of those who will now go out and show off the capabilities of the EV3 was great to see :)

Just a very simple idea that is working well for me in my workshops, I am sorry if you have already come up with this idea yourself!!!

I get Y6 children (age 10-11) to attach a bulb to the back of Damien's domabot build and then instruct them to ensure it is lit any time that the robot is reversing. This then leads on, to a road safety discussion and it is surprising that the majority of these children don't realise that cars have reversing lights to warn them that they are about to reverse.

Full discussion here

This prompted a bit of a discussion about how such a project could lead on to other subjects.  Geraldine didn't share exactly the program she used, but based on her idea, this is what I came up with. 

The first line will play a note (G) for 0.5 seconds, then wait for 0.5 seconds.  The whole thing is repeated 4 times.

The second line has the robot reversing for 4 seconds at 20 percent power.

The third line uses the Light Sensor block, not to take a measurement, but to toggle the 'Generate Light' function that is used when using the Light Sensor in either Ambient or Reflected mode. 

Becasue all three lines run on their own sequence bar, they will be executed in parallel, that is, the robot will reverse, beep and flash the light all at exactly the same time.

I then turn the whole thing into a MyBlock, so I can use it whenever I want.  This program will have the robot drive up to an obstacle, run the reversing block, turn a bit and then go driving to find the next obstacle.

If you're interested, I've document the whole process in the video below :)  (Make sure you watch in HD) 

I'm a bit late to the game, but now my books have been listed on Amazon Europe websites such as Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, and Amazon.es.

It will probably mean cheaper shipping for those of you that shop from those particular sites.

To find them, just go to your Amazon store of choice and do a search for "Damien Kee" and my books should pop up.

If you've bought a book and have found it useful, please don't hesitate to leave a review, it would make my day! :)

(click for the pdf)

Let us know if you have some success with it! 

I've broken it down into 3 parts

• Part 1: Connecting 2 NXT's together.  This shows you what menu items you need to choose (4:00)
• Part 2: Simple Bluetooth communication.  Having an action on one NXT trigger a Bluetooth message to be sent to the other NXT which inturn generates a new action (5:31)
• Part 3: Using one NXT as a remote, to control a second NXT.  This requires constant Bluetooth messages to be sent from the Master NXT to the Slave NXT (16:47)

So while these don't cover *everything* you can do with Bluetooth, I hope it gets people started!

What have you done / would you do, with a Bluetooth connection?  Let me know in the comments below.

In just about every subject at school, there is vocabulary to be learnt (parts of a tree, names of characters in a book, different uses of onions in medieval society etc..)  When I was in school, the teacher would give us all the words to learn as well as their definitions.  To test if we had learnt them, we were given some 'interactive' activities - word searches, crosswords, connect the word to the description etc.  I guess it worked ok, but with the web tools that are available nowadays, it is possible to make it far more engaging for the students.  Having the students create their own crosswords (with clues) which are then shared with other students, forces them to think not only about the words they need to use, how it will be layed out, but also how the clues are too be written.  Too much information and it's too easy.  Too little (or possibly incorrect) information, and you can't solve it.

By putting them into groups to create their crossword, you also can get them to check each others work, "Is their enough info in that clue?", "Is there a better way of phrasing that clue?" etc.

Using Google Sheets, it is very easy to constuct a simple crossword within a small group.

I created a template for it that anyone is free to use (just let me know how it works in your class!)

Students come up with a list of words to suit a topic.  They then start inserting those words into a crossword, making sure they share at least one letter with an existing word.  Words and clues are colour matched (by using the fill colour tool) so you know what clues match to the crossword.

The great thing about Google Sheets is that you can then delete all the letters, but the background colours will remain so you know where the words go :)