I’m in the US and volunteered to be the robotics coach at my daughter’s school. There will be 5+ 12-14 year old kids and I assume they start from scratch. They have some programming knowledge (Scratch, Java, code HS), though. I have no experience. Only reason i volunteered was because that was the only way to have this class for my daughter. We will meet once a week for 2 hours.
I looked at what the school has and there are remnants of this Makeblock mBot Ultimate. They also have a bunch of metal pieces and fasteners to build a robot from scratch. The former coach had years of experience and they took part in competitions. But this is too much for this year. A pre-made kit will be better. And none of this year’s students was part of the former class. I attached pics of what I found.
What type of kit would be a good start to begin but also to progress? I think each student having a kit at home would be best since the meeting at class isn’t enough to trouble-shoot and we can’t take school stuff home.
Would that Makeblock mBot kit be appropriate (since we have one already… and it looks like a beginner could start and progress)? it seems to work with the app, but also with Arduino. This seems nice to start easy and work up. Or should we start with a simpler kit?
I also wonder if it is beneficial if every student has the same kit, or if they can pick their own or what requirements the kits should have? Maybe they can collaborate at home. At this school most students live allover the area, so they don’t necessarily hang out after school and group projects may be harder to do.
Any more difficult projects would be for next year once we all have some experience.
Any advice is appreciated. Before i discuss with parents, I like to come up with some valid ideas.
We are glad to hear about your interested in robotics and future volunteering.
MakeBlock mBot Ultimate Kit is generally designed for students aged 12 and up. It’s ideal for middle school and high school students who have some basic understanding of robotics and are ready to delve deeper into programming and engineering concepts.
If you need an official offer from RobotShop to your school, let us know and we can prepare this for you.
Providing each student with their own kit can make a big difference in their understanding and ability to troubleshoot. Are you considering purchasing kits for all the students, or are you exploring ways to help parents purchase the kits?
Also, good thing about this kit is that you can build 10 different projects, so even if they all have the same kit, they don’t need to have same project.
thanks for the reply. I’m still trying to find out if they work well. So far I was able to connect via USB-cable, and upload a program (mblock) and have the robot execute it.
But I have not been able to do the same with Bluetooth. I have a BT 5.3
When I select the CyberPi, BT seems to connect. but when I use the Ultimate, BT is grayed out. those robot kids were purchased in 2016. So they may not resemble what currently is the Ultimate kit.
Are they just not able to actually use BT? They work with BT when using a smartphone/tablet with the app, though.
