TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Robot Work?
This instructional activity introduces electricity, batteries and motors using a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot. The associated activity guides students to build a simple LEGO NXT set-up and see the practical implementation of the concepts...
Read Works
Read Works: Passages: Paired Text: "World's Greatest Robot" by w.m. Akers
[Free Registration/Login Required] The paired passages "Streetcar!" and "World's Greatest Robot" explore the nature of sibling relationships. Question sets are provided for each passage separately and combined.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Gears: Determining Angular Velocity
Students work as engineers and learn to conduct controlled experiments by changing one experimental variable at a time to study its effect on the experiment outcome. Specifically, they conduct experiments to determine the angular...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Maze Challenge
As the first engineering design challenge of the unit, students are introduced to the logic for solving a maze. student groups apply that logic to program LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to navigate through a maze, first with no sensors, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Timing a Speedbot!
Students strengthen their communication skills by first learning the meaning of base units and derived units. Then, working in groups, students measure the time for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and calculate the robots' average speeds at...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Light Sensor Work?
A mini-activity, which uses LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT intelligent bricks and light sensors gives students a chance to investigate how light sensors function in preparation for the associated activity involving the light sensors and taskbots.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Master Driver
Students learn how rotational sensors measure distance, how mathematics can be used for real-world purposes, and about potential sources of error due to gearing when using rotation sensor readings for distance calculations.
Read Works
Read Works: Robo Helpers
[Free Registration/Login Required] Students read about new robots that learn to walk like humans. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in drawing conclusions.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Friction Force
Students use LEGO MINDSTORMS robotics to help conceptualize and understand the force of friction. Specifically, they observe how different surfaces in contact result in different frictional forces. A LEGO robot is constructed to pull a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robo Clock
Students learn various topics associated with the circle through studying a clock. Topics include reading analog time, understanding the concept of rotation (clockwise vs. counter-clockwise), and identifying right angles and straight...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Trebuchet Launch
Students work as engineers to design and test trebuchets (in this case LEGO MINDSTORMS robots) that can launch objects. During the testing stage, they change one variable at a time to study its effect on the outcome of their designs....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wide World of Gears
In an interactive and game-like manner, students learn about the mechanical advantage that is offered by gears. By virtue of the activity's mechatronics presentation, students learn to study a mechanical system as a dynamic system under...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: On Track Unit Conversion
Students use three tracks marked on the floor, one in yards, one in feet and one in inches. As they start and stop a robot specific distances on a "runway," they can easily determine the equivalent measurements in other units by looking...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using Waits, Loops and Switches
Students incorporate their knowledge of wait blocks, loops, and switches into their programming of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to perform different tasks depending on input from a sound sensor and two touch sensors. This activity...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do Human Sensors Work?
This lesson highlights the similarities between human sensors and their engineering counterparts. Taking this approach enables students to view the human body as a system, that is, from the perspective of an engineer. Humans have...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Claw
Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of...
![Sprk: Orb Basic Lesson 2 [Pdf] Lesson Plan](https://static.lp.lexp.cloud/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "Sprk: Orb Basic Lesson 2 [Pdf] Lesson Plan")
Other
Sprk: Orb Basic Lesson 2 [Pdf]
Students will use Sphero to explore the computer science concepts of variables and conditionals (ifstatements). They will use OrbBasic, which is a text-based programming language for the Sphero. They will write a simple program that...
Other
Sprk: Sphero Chariot Stem Challenge [Pdf]
SPRK STEM challenges are fun, interactive activities that challenge learners to use creativity and team-work to move through simple steps of the design process in order to build Sphero-based creations. In this challenge, there are...
Other
Sprk: Macro Lab Lesson 4 Percentages: Teacher Guide [Pdf]
Young scholars will use Sphero to explore percentages using speed and color. The speed experiments are quantitative and the color experiments are qualitative. They will program the Sphero to move at 100% speed for a particular amount of...
Other
Sprk: Time, Speed, and Distance:teacher Guide [Pdf]
Students will use Sphero to show that there is a linear relationship between time, speed, and distance. They will program Sphero to move at a particular speed for a particular amount of time, and then measure how far it has gone.They...
Other
Sprk: Sphero Bridge Stem Challenge [Pdf]
SPRK STEM challenges are fun, interactive activities that challenge students to use creativity and team-work to move through simple steps of the design process in order to build Sphero-based creations. In this challenge students will...
Read Works
Read Works: Almost Human
[Free Registration/Login Required] This nonfiction passage discusses the topic of robots. This passage is a stand-alone curricular piece that reinforces essential reading skills and strategies and establishes scaffolding for vocabulary...