LEGO Education to Introduce New Robotics Package in 2009
Here's a post from Macworld Magazine:
"Lego Education, a business unit of the Lego Group, introduced Lego Education WeDo, a new robotics package designed for classrooms of primary school students ages 7-11. It’s coming in January 2009 — pricing is yet to be announced.
WeDo is aimed at providing students with some hands-on experience in building Lego-based robotics systems and programming them. It builds on Lego’s highly successful and popular Mindstorms products and works with Macs, PCs, OLPC, XO and Intel Classmate laptops.
The company will launch WeDo simultaneously in the United States and Brazil. It’s describing WeDo as the first product created by Lego Education specifically to cater to emerging markets.
The package includes 158 Lego elements, including gears and levers, a USB hub that connects to a host computer to allow for control of hardware input and output, one motion sensor and one tilt sensor, drag-and-drop icon-based software developed by National Instruments, as well as an activity pack CD-ROM containing 24 hours of instruction and a dozen activities. For educators, Lego has developed WeDo to cover curriculum including language and literacy, mathematics, science and technology."
The original link ishere .
"Lego Education, a business unit of the Lego Group, introduced Lego Education WeDo, a new robotics package designed for classrooms of primary school students ages 7-11. It’s coming in January 2009 — pricing is yet to be announced.
WeDo is aimed at providing students with some hands-on experience in building Lego-based robotics systems and programming them. It builds on Lego’s highly successful and popular Mindstorms products and works with Macs, PCs, OLPC, XO and Intel Classmate laptops.
The company will launch WeDo simultaneously in the United States and Brazil. It’s describing WeDo as the first product created by Lego Education specifically to cater to emerging markets.
The package includes 158 Lego elements, including gears and levers, a USB hub that connects to a host computer to allow for control of hardware input and output, one motion sensor and one tilt sensor, drag-and-drop icon-based software developed by National Instruments, as well as an activity pack CD-ROM containing 24 hours of instruction and a dozen activities. For educators, Lego has developed WeDo to cover curriculum including language and literacy, mathematics, science and technology."
The original link is
Comments
If robotics is really becoming the killer app of hands-on learning, couldn't this new cheaper, easier-to-program kit fill a huge market gap and become wildly popular in schools and homes, both in the U.S. and developing countries like Brazil and India?
Yes, this "robotics-lite" package may fill a niche for those looking for a cheaper alternative to a complete NXT kit.
I'm eager to see what the kit looks like when it comes out.