NXT Amusement Park – Lopez-Benitez + Murray
October 1st, 2013 by Emily Taintor
Name of Unit | NXT Amusement Park Unit | Author(s) | Leticia Lopez-Benitez + Polly Murray | School | International School of Boston (ISB) | Teacher | Lizzy Mayer + Fred Bolzan | Brief Description | This semester, students will build and program sturdy structures and learn how to use sensors through NXT kits and LEGO Mindstorms. Each group will build one part of the final project: an amusement park. Through this, we will emphasize the engineering design process. | Grade(s) | 6th-8th | Keywords | NXTs, Amusement Park, Middle School | Number of Weeks | 9 | Week 1 | | - Spaghetti Towers
- Students continued to work on their car structures
- Introduction to programming in Mindstorms
Week 2 | | - Review of Mindstorms userface
- Completion of the three programming challenges from prior week
- Introduce new challenge: move car as close to line as possible without sensors (use time, power, etc)
- Debrief before 3 week hiatus
Week 3 | | - Introduce sensors
- Brainstorm various uses of sensors
- Programming challenge with sensors (TBD)
Week 4 | | - Introduce amusement park class goal
- Presentation: types of Engineering needed for park, Engineering design process
- Brainstorm types of rides, robots possible
Week 5 | | - Begin work on amusement park ride
- Research types of rides
Week 6 | | - Continue work on ride
- Brainstorm solutions to design criteria
Week 7 | | - Continue work on ride
- Build and test
Week 8 | | - Finish work on ride
- Evaluate
Week 9 | | - Presentations and debrief
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