Lego bricks come to life through computers

A two-day Lego education workshop was recently held at the National Curriculum Centre.

The event was organised by Integrated Marketing Services Ltd, sole local distributors of Lego education material, with the collaboration of the Directorate for Quality & Standards in Education of the Education Division.

Heads of schools and departments, peripatetic teachers, science, ICT and design and technology educators from private, Church and public schools attended the workshops conducted by Rob Widger, the Lego Education Manager for the UK.

Lego Education is part of the Lego Group of companies which specifically focuses on the education sector by providing complete learning solutions which cover important curriculum areas while stimulating creativity, problem-solving and team-working skills. The special sets, not found in high-street shops, contain not only the well-known bricks and parts, but also teacher's guides, activity material and student worksheets to facilitate lessons and their objectives. These activities and materials are used from pre-school all the way up to tertiary education.

Mr Widger introduced the Lego Education Science and Technology sets and how these allow very young students to explore and learn about every aspect that covers science, technology, engineering and maths by using simple but highly effective resources, such as their simple machines and mechanisms construction set that work like large-scale commercial versions.

He also introduced the WeDo concept for primary schools, the latest set that includes the famous Lego System bricks for construction purposes. Special parts include a USB hub with two input/output ports, a motor, a motion sensor and a tilt sensor. The WeDo software and the activity CD-Rom introduces students to software programming concepts and command sequences through the use of a PC and drag-and-drop graphical user interface.

The WeDo core software is based on the industry standard LabView graphical programming language produced by National Instruments (USA) and used for almost all large and critical industrial uses such as Aeronautics, the Mars Rover projects and the CERN project among many, many others worldwide.

While a script-based language is comparatively limited to writing applications and for the gaming industry, the power and ease of use of ready-made graphics-based software such as LabView has a wider use in the majority of industrial process work where most processes and functions are already built into the software.

On the second day secondary and tertiary educators were exposed to the Mindstorms NXT robotics assembly set. Attendees were given a purposely-designed instruction booklet to build a simple two-motor three-wheeled tribot. These were brought to life thanks to the new Mindstorms NXT Education V2 software through the laptops and a USB or Bluetooth connection.

Many participants even resorted to doing some testing outside the premises and kept improving on their "creations" until they were happy with the outcome.

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