A Tablet-Based Lego Mindstorms Programming Environment for Children

Tablets, such as the iPad and Kindle, provide a portable platform for children of all ages to explore various content through apps and interactive books. The use of gestures provides a means of interaction that is intuitive to children as a means of navigating apps or activating media-based content. The tablet as a programming platform is unique in that the gesture-based skills used in other apps are extrapolated and applied to computational thinking skills and interaction with a robot, which maneuvers based on the child's creation. This paper describes the workflow and user interface design to facilitate Lego Mindstorms NXT programming by children.