We here at Enable love to see products and resources that bring new people to robotics.
We also love that LEGO Education is putting out products to get young kids excited about robotics and give educators who may shy away from incorporating robotics in the in the classroom, a fun and meaningful way to do it. Using robotics in new and creative ways at the same time is even better!
So…we are very excited to see that LEGO has released new, cross-curricular extension packs for their WeDo Robotics sets.
“According to Phil: A Young Thinker’s Guide to Robots” is in production and due out later this year. The book features an endearing mechanical narrator who takes budding engineers and their parents through the history, uses, and inner workings of our automated friends. Many thanks to Mark Hughes, our resident artist, for making Phil so darned cute.
Until his debut, Phil maybe followed on Twitter (philthinksbots) , where he will dispense all sorts of interesting tidbits.
Friends of ours at Robo-tic in Quebec are hosting the Zone 01 robotics competition with their partners this Friday, April 1st!
They’re hosting a live stream of the event at www.zone01.ca!
Check out the event and learn a little bit about another group of dedicated people working to promote technology in the classroom and create a supportive community for robotics education.
For those of you living in the area, the group will be partnering Jr.FLL and FLL next year!
The third video is about integrating the 2011 Vision Example program, and how to program the robot to center itself on the game poles in autonomous mode.
Adobe Flash is a wonderful program that works for all browsers and the flash video can be stretched and altered according to the screen. I learned a bit of flash in grade 10 (which was a long long time ago!), and I did Adobe Flash cs2 … Back in those days, we did not use action script for flash. It was very simple. All we did was create some e-cards where objects fly across the screen. Oh and did I mention that connecting buttons to another scene was really simple back in those days!
And then came Adobe Flash cs4, where we have 3 DIFFERENT kinds of action script: Action Script 1.0, Action Script 2.0, and Action Script 3.0. Action Script is like a type of programming language, in fact it’s very similar to c++ in a way. When creating my first flash project in Adobe Flash cs4 I thought the action script didn’t matter and that all three action scripts behave the same. So on the first try, I did action script 3.0. I did some animations, and it turned out to be better than what I expected. But then came the linking. Linking each buttons to the next scene… now that was a battle. I kept on getting errors whenever I compile the flash movie. I was (metaphorically of course) climbing up the walls.
You see the flash buttons did not work at all. I checked the coding online and it was the same. Then I was reading on what the experts say. They said that if you are linking buttons to the next scene then do not use Action Script 3.0, and Action Script 3.0 should be used if you’re linking frames. Okay, so I was like if I change action scripts then I can link the buttons to the next scene and everything would be perfect. Boy was I wrong! I changed from Action Script 3.0 to Action Script 1.0 and then a pop-up appears stating that some of the animations are now disabled since Action Script 1.0 does not support the bone tool, used for enhanced animations. So I had to recreate some of the animations, and on top of that the buttons still did not work. -_- I got fed up with the information that the internet gave me, so I decided to use one of the utilities that will never turn you down… books! I borrowed about 3 books on Adobe Flash cs4 and I was reading and reading and doing some of the practice tutorials. Finally, I was able to link the buttons to the next scene. I thought I will never have said this … but THANK GOD FOR BOOKS! = D
Check out my flash project by clicking on the link below =)
In keeping with the long tradition of shaking one’s fist at young whippersnappers, here is an interesting video clip. It features a bunch of sweet little ankle-biters mocking the technology some of us grew up with. Awwwwww…
For all of you “Hey, I wasn’t even born until the 90′s” types, in a few years, “Generation Alpha” will be scratching their heads at Ipods, PVRs and Smart Phones.
An Interview with Marie Planchard – Director World Education Markets for Dassault Systemes SolidWorks Corp. at the USA Science and Engineering Festival, on the topics of CATIA, 3DVIA, DraftSight, SIMULIA, SolidWorks, ENOVIA and more.
Enable Training and Consulting is proud to be a part of bringing innovation into the classroom through the development of video tutorials for high school students. We worked with SolidWorks to create resources for teaching students how to harness the power of the latest 3D CAD modeling software.
Enable Training and Consulting congratulates Dassault Systèmes on their continued effort to bring the latest in engineering technology into the classroom.
We finally got the Delta Robot Optimus Prime aka DROP to move. After hours of calibrating the servos, we couldn’t get two servos to co-operate and move one arm smoothly. We removed one servo from each arm because there were just too many variables with two servos working together, they were always fighting each other. Despite doubt, one servo is strong enough to move an arm by itself.
The movement is only up and down for now, because we are still trying to figure out the inverse kinematics
The program used to move DROP was a simple slider control with angles. It fed the angle straight into the TETRIX Move Servos VI, and it was enough to get this thing to finally move.
Here’s a little lesson in engineering, courtesy of Adam Sadowsky, Ok Go, and Ted.com.
(If you’ve never seen the Rube Goldberg machine video for the song, “This Too Shall Pass” by OkGo, you MUST. It does play at the end of this talk, but you can find better quality elsewhere.)
Teacher talk: This talk is a good hook when laying out a challenge to students. Adam Sadowsky outlines the importance of facing an engineering challenge head-on, brainstorming, planning, testing, remaining flexible and creative in your approach, and above all else, perseverance.
It may be a little intimidating to think of preschoolers who are as comfortable with a laptop as they are with crayons and finger paint, but it is happening. I’m actually excited to think that the practice of having students memorize and regurgitate may be going the way of the dodo. How fantastic would it be to have a generation of learners focused on creative, innovative, critical thought? Here’s an interesting clip about upcoming trends in education:
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