If I Only Had a Brain...Upgrading LEGO Mindstorm Robots
My students need upgraded LEGO Mindstorm bricks. Our existing LEGO Mindstorm kits do not work with Chromebooks. The new EV3 brick will allow us to continue utilizing our investment in LEGO robotics. Yay!
"When I grow up, I want to solve problems that don't even exist yet!" These are the words that inspire my students! By setting goals for learning and then collaborating with their peers to find solutions, my students are practicing the very skills needed by their future employers.
Students are learning to be self-directed learners and they love this opportunity to "be the captain of their educational ship!" SCREAM Lab is a place where invention and inspiration combine with setting goals and working hard to reach them.
Our students know that FAIL often means First Attempt In Learning something!
In SCREAM Lab, students set their own goals for learning using different kinds of technology. By allowing our students to set their own goals and monitor their progress- and setbacks - students learn to persevere to meet their goals. This is exactly the combination of skills needed in the world to solve complex problems. My students are participating in pathways to learn different skill sets such as animation, coding, computational thinking, and piloting drones. They look forward to the SCREAM Lab where technology is not the focus, tech is like a desk, enables learning.
My Project
We have many LEGO NXT robots that do not work with our new technology. The NXT firmware won't work on a Chromebook. We need new "bricks" or "brains" that run on EV3 firmware so we will be able to upgrade our robots and continue to experiment in SCREAM Lab.
Technology changes so rapidly that although we purchased the NXT robots recently, LEGO no longer supports NXT to the same extent as EV3s.
Fortunately for us, everything in the NXT kit can be used on the EV3 brick. We will be in great shape once we replace the NXT "brain" of each kit with an EV3 brick.
The nice thing about these LEGO robots is that our middle schools have teams using this technology! Our elementary students will be exposed to this technology so they are poised to compete in middle school and bring home the prize to our county!
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Dr. DeGennaro and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
