LEGO projects in school?

[Wardancer]

Hi everyone,

with me recently having turned from a university scholar of witchcraft into a christian private school teacher, I am looking for ways to introduce LEGO projects in school. Not as part of official subjects like maths or physics, but as a voluntary pastime for pupils, but led and supervised by a teacher (me). To some extend, I would get paid for this.

Does anyone here have any experience with such a format? Ideas?

My idea would be something like writing stories, building them with LEGO and take digital pictures to make narrative photo books or powerpoint presentations. This combines the power of narratives that I believe in with building and results in nice products the kids could show at home or whereever. Also they could paint backgrounds and built studios from cardboard boxes.

Of course, I would need loads of figs and bricks for this.

Do any of you have experience with such things?

[Legoman of War]

I have no experience with it but my 6 year old does those kinds of things and uses the Lego movie maker on an ipad. He gets alot of enjoyment out of it and his movies are getting pretty good.

LMW

[JopieK]

we automate LEGO train, make Mindstorms Robots, use Arduino to make LEGO Robots, we participate in the FIRST LEGO League, etc. (reformed christian high school). Stop motion would be great as well ;)

[dr_spock]

How old are your students? If they are too young for fun robot and technical stuff, you could try Lego Bible vignettes builds.

[ShaydDeGrai]

I had an NSF grant to explore constructivism in early education (at the K-6 grade levels). As an educational methodology, constructivism is all about putting the problem ahead of the solution, to create a context where students realize that they _need_ to learn something more than what they currently know to get where they want to be; to draw from real life experience and relate it to what they're learning rather than the other way 'round.

This is sort of the exact opposite of how most things are taught in the states (at least in the pre-college years). Usually we fixate on memorization in the yearly years, then branch out into instructional learning. In memorization we beat you over the head with a fact until you can spit it back at us without thinking (like the letters of the alphabet or the correct spelling and pronunciation of "neighbor") - there's typically little context, and little justification is usually offered for why things are the way they are, you're just expected to accept it for what it is and parrot back the answer we gave you. In instructional learning, we start to address more of the rules, the formulae, and the cause and effects that govern a given topic and, once we're done, we test how well things have sunk in by giving you a fabricated problem that, if you're very lucky may be vaguely related to the real world (or at least a world where strings have no mass, pulleys have no friction and rounding off to whole numbers has minimal impact on the final result.)

In constructivism, you start with a real world goal and let the kids brainstorm how to get from A to B. Moreover, you let them discover the limits of what they know and _why_ they need to know more to achieve their goal. Then, once the need is established, you offer examples and experiments that will allow them to expand their knowledge. It's sort of the difference between teaching someone calculus, then handing them an equation for acceleration due to gravity and asking them to do a double integral to get an equation for linear motion down an inclined track versus building a track, building a car, measuring how fast it went and then asking them to try to figure out how to make a faster car. Same physics, same equations (give or take friction) but one method is a lot more fun and focuses on teaching the students how to discover things for themselves rather than pass a test or apply memorized methods.

Under my grant, we build a maze (the wreck of the Titanic actually) with rewards hidden inside. The kids had to build robotic rovers (with cameras) to explore the maze and write up their report (draw maps, integrate photos, give a presentation). It was all done with Mindstorms and regular Lego (except the maze itself, that was MDF) Kids started with simple RC cars that couldn't even steer, but before long they wanted to understand rack and pinion mechanisms, differentials, gear ratios, and all sorts of things that they didn't have the math skills to describe in a physics class, but they could use it in their builds. Over the course of three months in an after school program I had a dozen ten year olds doing Algebra, programming in MAT Lab and cleaning up motion blurred images in Photoshop while their peers in the regular class room were still sorting out long division and forgetting that there's a silent 'b' in 'doubt'.

My advice would be, never underestimate the potential of your kids, provided you engage them properly. There's no such thing as too young, and a little frustration can be a great motivator provided it's the student that overcomes the frustrations, not the almighty hand of an instruction changing the rules on them. Kids like puzzles, they like narrative, and they'll absorb a lot of sophisticated knowledge and skills if you give them a reason to care.

Good luck.

[Wardancer]

Thanks for the responses.

My school does already have a course for the first LEGO robotic league, so anything technic related is already done by someone else. I would rather work on the aesthetic side of LEGO, which leaves less room for problem solving. A very interesting take on constructivism though.

Building vignettes of bible stories, hmm, like on the bricktestament webpage. Christian parents would love that. Personally, I would prefer elves slaughtering orcs, I would kind of need a very loose interpretation of the scripture for that. But if the kids want to build something like this, I would not stop.

A course like this would need to be open to ages 12 to 19. One problem might be that I might end up with loads of 12 year old girls building one horse story after the other. Maybe a few boys building ninja stuff, that would be nice.

Any more ideas?

[SandMirror38]

At my primary school they had a group called 'The Lego Club' where the teacher would say: Build 'such and such' and we had 50 minutes to build something. It was fun... for a little while

[meyerc13]

Building vignettes of bible stories, hmm, like on the bricktestament webpage. Christian parents would love that.

Just a word of caution, I'd avoid mentioning that site/book in a Christian setting. If you don't know, the creator is an atheist and tends to focus on the portions of the Bible that are more mature even if they aren't necessarily the more well known portions of the Bible. Many Christians take offense that he focuses on the negative parts of the Bible rather than the positives.

[WaysofSorting]

I am 99% sure you are aware of all this and I'm just looking a fool by posting. But for those of us not in the know, or on that 1% chance this is helpful:

Lego has an education website/webstore that pitches their products. Useful for culling video and inspiration when you pitch to the administration:

http://www.legoeduca...CFUgS7AodKnIATQ

One product you may want to look at is "Story Starter." Granted, you could probably build the curriculum and outcomes yourself based on the learning model here - but having it all come from a company is a nice "Cover your butt" option (even if it's an expensive one). All it takes is one disruptive (ie - creative) story told by a student and the parents can blame the instructor and end the fun for everyone. [Edit] - also it comes with the rubrics and alignment with core/common competencies which make "grading" and evaluating and planning much easier.

You could probably brick-link the kits for cheaper than buying them from LEGO, the main cost being the story visualizer software.

[Edit] - direct link to story starter - http://www.legoeduca...ne~StoryStarter

Edited December 19, 2013 by WaysofSorting

[mlynb1992]

When I was in the 8th grade, my teacher had us do an assignment in which we had to build an instrument that we could actually play. While it wasn't required to use LEGO bricks, I built a small guitar body from the bricks and attached strings. We had to play a song in front of the class so I think I did 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' or something simple.

Something like this was really fun and challenging at the time, and students were able to be creative in their own way.

[The Architect]

Give em a bunch of pieces, tell em to make something ( a car) the best one gets to keep their car.

[Dayton]

If your school as diffrent clubs maybe that could be one. If not you could use lego in Maths and such and such if the students have done there work and desirve it? Thats one way i guess.

[snowdogs]

I teach middle school science and social studies. I found large cases, filled them with bricks and glued base plates to the top. I put a case on each table of four. I use them to have the kids tell stories and build models to illustrate concepts. They love them. I have a project on donors choose right now to get more sets. Good luck!