LDD Teacher's Curriculum

[Master_Data]

A friend of mine just asked me to construct a lesson plan for teaching LDD to kids at a summer camp he will be running. I'm sure many of you are known as the 'Resident AFOL' in your communities as I am amongst my friends, but my love for LEGO doesn't mean I know how to use LDD enough to teach it. Has anyone here ever created a teaching guide for LDD that I could look at for inspiration?

[pbat]

Well, luckily LDD is pretty easy to use and very intuitive to learn, so there's probably not much need for an elaborated curriculum: Knowing the basic control elements will enable the kids to experiment on their own and just use their creativity.

You should presumably start by simply starting up LDD, next explain the distinctions between the different modes selectable on the startup screen (basic mode, mindstorms, extended) and then the respective control elements. For the latter please have a look at the online help, on Windows computers usually located at "C:\Program Files (x86)\LEGO Company\LEGO Digital Designer\Help\en-manual\en-manual.html": It briefly describes the mouse controls, camera controls and the different toolbar icons.

When showing the hinge and flex tools, LDD gladly crashs, so you should train the kids to save quite often. If the kids finally know how to save their creations, you can optionally start teaching some advanced building techniques like scaffolding and snot. You definitly should show them how to use templates and groups, as soon as the models acquire a certain size and go beyond "simple". Apart from that, let them just play.

[mzoli]

I would take some simple City sets for the beginning. Download some LXF from the Official Sets topic, take them apart by color and save a new lxf.

Building the sets using the pdf instructions should be a good fun for the kids.

[Zerobricks]

I did some LDD basics videos when I was doing animating tutorials...

Here's the first tutorial:

Edited June 6, 2015 by Zblj

[Thomas73]

I was also thinking to run a summer camp this year for my Phoenix preschool students but I couldn’t make it. But next year I’ll definitely organize the summer camp for them. Well, I am using those activities in my class that I had planned to teach in the summer camp.