Over the last couple of weeks I did an extensive search on to what robotic platform would be the best for my middle school. Back when I was in school in the 90’s I dabbled with Fishertechnik in my tech class. We only used them for two weeks or so, but in that short time it had opened a new world to me. I think that is what made me decide to go to school for Mechanical Engineering. I did however decide to be a Technology Teacher and ran across the Lego Mindstorms which are pretty cool too. I have been in the middle school for some time and never had the resources to purchase any of the kits for my class. Recently there has been some talk about some grants that could possibly help me out and finally get some robotics into my curriculum. I pushed out a couple of emails to others who were working with the robotics and some other college professors. I received different perspectives for many but one brand seems to be taking the lead in popularity. From what I gathered Fishertechnik which was once popular with Project Lead the Way had fallen off the radar. Lego has a great product but durability seems to be an issue when it comes to intense use. The one brand that had been given the best reviews was VEX Robotics. I was intimidated by the programming language that they used and was scared that it wouldn’t work for my middle school students until I ran across Modkit. Modkit is a language developed for easy programming similar to how the LEGO Mindstorms are programed. It uses drag and drop programming which students can easily see and comprehend in comparison to RobotC programing language. Not to say that it is bad, because it isn’t. It is just a bit too advanced to be implemented at the middle school level in my opinion. Modkit does allow the user to use and read the actual code if you so choose to do so. I was already familiar with how it works because I have my students participate in an Hour of Code developed in part by Bill Gates and Mark Zuckererg. If you haven’t checked that out you should at CODE.org as my students loved it.
I ended up pursuing the VEX IQ series which is appropriate for middle school based on a couple of factors. First the design / reliability of the parts seem to be at the same level as LEGO. Most of the parts are plastic which makes it more affordable than any of their metal kits. That leads be to my second point. You get a big bang for your buck when it comes to the VEX IQ when compared to LEGO MIndstorms, Fishertechnik, or even the metal units from VEX. My third factor for choosing was a big one; I needed something that was user friendly for middle school. I have every last student that our small school has and the programming language needed to be simple enough so all my students could enjoy it. The recent addition of Modkit programming provides the simplicity that I was looking for and best of all it is free. I do believe that the LEGO Mindstorms software possibly would be easier to use but it does not transition well into an industry standard that our students would need in the future.
I have nothing against LEGO or Fishertechnik as they both offer really good robotics. I was actually leaning towards both of them prior to my research. Now off to the next battle of searching and applying for funding.
*********UPDATE***********
Well it came time to pull the trigger to purchase our robotics for our classroom, and to my surprise I purchased the EV3 core sets with expansion sets. So what was it that tipped the scales from VEX to EV3. There were a few factors that pushed me from VEX to EV3, first the build time of a VEX robot is typically much longer then that of an EV3. Secondly I was able to mess around with some EV3 units at the Oswego Technology Conference. They were much more durable then I predicted. One actually fell of a table and it didn't even phase it. Not a single piece came off. Finally I spoke with the Lego rep for at least two hours. He and a couple other tech teachers that were currently using the EV3 units provided me with so much information and ideas of what projects I could do with the kids. Talking to teachers that were using the units was probably the best information I could get. They advised me of what extra parts I would probably need, and the do's and don'ts as well. So there you have it, decision
If you have anything to add please comment below as I and others would love to hear opinions and reasoning behind other robotic platforms.
I ended up pursuing the VEX IQ series which is appropriate for middle school based on a couple of factors. First the design / reliability of the parts seem to be at the same level as LEGO. Most of the parts are plastic which makes it more affordable than any of their metal kits. That leads be to my second point. You get a big bang for your buck when it comes to the VEX IQ when compared to LEGO MIndstorms, Fishertechnik, or even the metal units from VEX. My third factor for choosing was a big one; I needed something that was user friendly for middle school. I have every last student that our small school has and the programming language needed to be simple enough so all my students could enjoy it. The recent addition of Modkit programming provides the simplicity that I was looking for and best of all it is free. I do believe that the LEGO Mindstorms software possibly would be easier to use but it does not transition well into an industry standard that our students would need in the future.
I have nothing against LEGO or Fishertechnik as they both offer really good robotics. I was actually leaning towards both of them prior to my research. Now off to the next battle of searching and applying for funding.
*********UPDATE***********
Well it came time to pull the trigger to purchase our robotics for our classroom, and to my surprise I purchased the EV3 core sets with expansion sets. So what was it that tipped the scales from VEX to EV3. There were a few factors that pushed me from VEX to EV3, first the build time of a VEX robot is typically much longer then that of an EV3. Secondly I was able to mess around with some EV3 units at the Oswego Technology Conference. They were much more durable then I predicted. One actually fell of a table and it didn't even phase it. Not a single piece came off. Finally I spoke with the Lego rep for at least two hours. He and a couple other tech teachers that were currently using the EV3 units provided me with so much information and ideas of what projects I could do with the kids. Talking to teachers that were using the units was probably the best information I could get. They advised me of what extra parts I would probably need, and the do's and don'ts as well. So there you have it, decision
If you have anything to add please comment below as I and others would love to hear opinions and reasoning behind other robotic platforms.
RSS Feed
