Teaching software engineering principles using Robolab and Lego Mindstorms

Engineering can be made real and enjoyable to young children while providing opportunities to teach engineering applications. A robotics camp was developed to teach general programming concepts to elementary and middle school children using Lego Mindstorms kits. The camp could easily be expanded to teach students in high school. In recent years, engineering has been taught in very few K-12 schools causing a problem in recruiting students for engineering at the college level Ideas for promoting engineering include training teachers at the K-12 grades to teach engineering and involving parents at this age level to follow through to graduation with training [1]. The curriculum developed for the weeklong camp could be used by fourth through eighth grade teachers to acquaint students with programming skills needed for computer engineering in high school and college. Since children of all ages enjoy playing with robots, the Team Challenge (Lego Mindstorms) kit developed by Lego Educational Division is an excellent teaching tool. Robolab, developed by Tufts University, can be used to teach computer engineering principles to fairly young students. Students starting at age ten, eleven or beyond can start to understand and enjoy software development using these kits. A weeklong camp using Team Challenge kits with Robolab was developed to teach children of these ages programming concepts that could be used in all programme design. An advantage of Robolab for this age group is the icon-based language, making it easier to understand than a written programming language.