Hello all,

I'm looking for a resource (besides the included documentation) that would have some basic projects that a 12-year-old could understand. I bought the Mindstorms NXT for my brothers for Christmas and being that I don't live near them I'd like to send them some projects from time to time. A cursory google search only brought up sites selling educational materials and I'm not really interested in that, I'm just a bit too busy to come up with a project for them to do on my own. Any advice/links would be greatly appreciated!

- Ben

check out www.nxtprograms.com, its a great site that I found through Michael's blog (vishots.com) and I've been working the robots on the site with my 6 year old.

Chris

I have to agree. This is the best (hands down) site out there for young kids. My son is 9 and he goes on there all by himself. After a few hours he emerges with "hey look at what I built!". The instructions are perfect and detailed. The code is right there so you just click on the link, it opens in NXT G and you just run it, done!

PS. people actually read my blog? Thanks!

Thanks so much for the replies folks, that was exactly what I was looking for!

- Ben

WOW!!

cool stuff.. I need to actually find time to play with my Mindstorms my wife got me for Christmas, my 5 yr old keep buggin me too

That's a shame Jeff. I think 5 years old is kinda pushing it though. However, you never know until you try.

Slightly off-topic, but...

My wife was an elementary-school teacher before resigning to stay home with our young kids. She is now working 2 afternoons a week at her old school doing an after-school reading program with a couple fourth-graders who need extra help. One of them has expressed an interest in robots and electronics, which got me thinking; if I had more free time, I think it would be fun and worthwhile to get an NXT kit and volunteer to spend time working with it with upper-elementary or middle=school kids. What better way to get kids interested in computers, programming, engineering, etc!

Anyone out there doing this?

My six year old (he got the kit for his 6th birthday) can handle most of the projects on the nxtprograms site. I do have to help with getting some of the pieces together but he picks out most of the parts and follows the directions pretty good. You'll never know unless you try it with your 5 year old.

BTW, I've thought about volunteering to help kids learn about robotics and programming too. Perhaps something with First Lego League?

That's a pretty cool organization. I was surprised that I wasn't able to find anything in my area (Northern Virginia). You'd think with all the tech business here, someone would be doing such things.

One of the guys I work with has a 12 year old son who is in some sort of "league". They get the requirements beforehand and then have to program their kit to compete in competition against the other teams. Each team has at least one adult coordinator. I'm not sure who it's all organized through, but it sounded like fun. I'll have to ask him about it next time I see him - he's out today.

I know he said there was a team of six year olds, but that it looked like the dads were doing most of the programming in that group .

http://www.vadcfll.org/

That's great that they are bugging you!

Speaking from experience, but don't push them. I tried teaching my son Quick Basic so he code up a ninja fighting game when he was too young.

Let them pull.

Ben

We did something like this with a local school (not me personally, but my boss). I believe it's NXT for middle school and LabVIEW for some of the kids in high school who needed some measurement, control and mechatronics stuff. Since it's a side project, it kind of got less attention and most of the effort recently was put in by the teacher who actually teaches the kids.