LegoEducation
Latest
LEGO's little bot teaches kids about science and coding
Earlier today, LEGO revealed WeDo 2.0, a new robotics kit that's designed for elementary school kids. The 280-piece set enables the creation of motorized forms, okay, robots, that will help students learn the basics of engineering, science and coding. For instance, you can build Milo, the adorable one-eyed bot that's pictured, which can follow along strings of simple commands that are crafted in an accompanying app. Every time it follows a task, the corresponding icon flashes on screen so that children can see how programs are executed -- removing bugs when conflicts arise. It seems fascinating that a child in second grade could program the machine to move in a certain direction, but that's only the tip of LEGO's educational iceberg.
Microsoft demos Lego Mindstorms EV3 platform using Surface-controlled robot
Robot toys aren't what you'd normally expect from Microsoft's developer-focused Build conference, but that's just what the company served up today. In a chat about developer tools, Microsoft's VP of Web Services Antoine Leblond demoed a version of Lego Education's unreleased Mindstorms EV3 platform using -- what else? -- a brick-built robot and a Surface tablet. Citing the Win RT APIs that let users interact with device-specific protocols (i.e., USB, Bluetooth, etc.) Leblond was able to stream live video of his face, using a separate Windows tablet, to the tank-like franken-toy. All whimsy aside, this MS / Lego collaboration's less about giving kids a neat, remote spying tool and more about making programming fun and approachable. You know, STEM stuff. And we're all for it.
