Premature Curriculum Review: Lego Mindstorms NXT Mayan Adventure

One of the challenges for homeschooling parents trying to evaluate curriculum is that, whether at websites like homeschoolreviews.com or on people's own blogs, there is a tendency for moms to post reviews during the first few glowing days. So there are a lot of reviews that start, "I just got this in the mail and it looks great!" or, "We've been using this for two weeks and my kids love it!" It makes sense; everybody's enthusiasm is highest when things are new. But it's not all that helpful in terms of knowing how it really worked out. It's a nice treat when someone comes back a few months later to update their review, or someone who used a curriculum over a full year, or more, writes a detailed review.

I have resolved, myself, to try not to write about curriculum until we've really given it a shot.

And I am breaking that resolution now. Sorry.

One of Eric's Christmas presents was the Lego Mindstorms NXT: The Mayan Adventure homeschool pack, which includes the book and some extra parts you will need for some of the challenges. We haven't started it yet, but I read through it the other day and am--yes--very excited about it. We're going to work on it this afternoon, and I will certainly try to post more as we get into it.

The book sets up five robotics challenges in the context of a story about a boy with an NXT kit who goes on an archaeology expedition with his uncle. They find themselves at a pyramid that has, as one of its security features, tiny tunnels leading to hidden switches and doorways, designed to be navigated by trained spider monkeys. The team has no spider monkeys. But they do have an NXT kit! So the robots need to be designed to do the spider monkeys' jobs. For instance, the first challenge is to build and program a robot that can travel ten feet down an 10-foot tunnel, turn 90 degrees, travel 8 feet, turn 90 degrees again, travel 3 feet and press a switchplate, and then turn around and come back out again.

Each challenge is set up over four chapters: one that tells the story of the boy; one that I really like that uses a planning and design worksheet to think through the specific tasks the robot has to do and how they might be done, and what constraints exist (for instance, this first robot has to be pretty narrow to get around the corners, and it has to be able to turn, which means using two motors); and then one about building the robot, and one about programming and de-bugging it. I like that the chapters on building and programming present various options, like using either the optical sensor or the pressure sensor to tell the robot when it's reached a corner, and model a trial-and-error approach. For instance, the author writes that it took four tries for him to get his robot right, and he describes what he did for each try, what went wrong, and what he tried to fix it.

I don't know how much patience Eric will have with the design process part; he likes to jump into things. But I like the way the book is organized. We're going to take our first shot at it this afternoon; I'll let you know how it goes. If I can find the battery charger for my camera battery, maybe there will even be pictures of our robot.

UPDATE: This afternoon we read the first chapter of the story, and the chapter on the Design and Planning process. To my pleased surprise, Eric loved the Design and Planning part, which has pre-printed journal pages on which you name your robot, describe in a paragraph what it will do (he dictated to me), break its job into a numbered list of individual tasks, think about constraints ("it has to be small enough to turn the corners without bumping into the wall"), brainstorm ideas, and sketch robot ideas. He was really into it. He wants to try something different than the author; the author's robot turns around and goes forward out the tunnel, but Eric wants his robot to back up. He was also the one who then spotted the flaw in his plan: the robot will need a sensor on the back, then, to keep it from bumping the walls when going backwards, as well as one on the front. He still wants to try this plan even though it will make the robot a little bigger.

After we did that part, we took a few minutes and sorted all his Mindstorms pieces into their proper places in his storage bin, and then he was ready to stop for the day. He's excited to build and test his robot tomorrow, and to show his dad his Design and Planning journal this evening. Fun!