Lego Education Spike Download
Trish Blaschke
BUILDING INSTRUCTIONS
The new form factors allow for very convenient ways to construct robots. However, this easy way also allows designer to be a bit lazy. In other words; the educational set doesn't provide very interesting robots. Even the LEGO Boost set had more interesting ones. I understand that the robots are meant for educational purposes and kids need to be able to build them in a short time, but I would have loved to see some more interesting concepts or one main model. In the next chapter, I will be building the robot of the expansion set. This chapter I will talk about units and building instructions of the base set.
SUMMARY
First of all, I have really started to like this set better over time. The funky colors don't bother me that much anymore and the unit plans are very fun and educational. The big wheels allows for making cool robots.
The main question for people interested in the new Mindstorms set is probably whether to get this set or the Robot Inventor set. That choice, as with most choices, depends on personal preferences, but I'd recommend getting the Robot Inventor set. The robots are much more appealing and they offer more playability. The challenges still offer a wide variety of scenarios, so that set also ticks the educational boxes. The Spike Prime is more like a proof of concept set, while the Robot Inventor set offers actual robots to play with. Obviously, this the reason why there is a difference between the retail and educational version, so it makes sense. If you are into robot MOCing the Spike Prime with Expansion is a very nice combination to get you started.
Nope it works with the train motor, the lights and the other ones as well. You have to add the additional motor blocks to the program and use power, not speed. At least with the robot inventor software. The spike software seems like it doesn't like that.
Ultimately, the simpler experience, additional sensors, and smaller size of the new system makes it a better choice for simple projects and most educational scenarios. Only a small number of computationally-intensive projects would benefit from the more powerful EV3 system anyways. (The new system is probably less appealing to the maker community, but that market is already saturated with Raspberry Pi and Arduino products.)
I am mentoring an FLL Team, as well as running robotics YouTube Channel, Tellurium Robotics. We just started using Spike this year, so we had to use Spike 3. I do have experience with spike 2, and am wondering if there is a way to get access to those blocks in Spike 3. Mainly, I just need to know where the motor degrees and motor rotation output blocks are, or if they even exist anymore.
Lego Education (formerly known as Lego Dacta and stylized as LEGO Education) is a Lego theme designed specifically for schools that concentrates sets that can be used by education institutions and includes sets that focus on Duplo and Technic themes and contain larger amounts of pieces.[2] The theme was first introduced in 1999.[3]
In 2018, The Lego Group launched the Master Educators. In a new scheme from Lego Education, 110 Master Educators have been named as part of the first cohort. It is hoped that teachers from all over the world can share best practice and new ideas. Intending to expand the program, The Lego Group will accept applications from education professionals all over the world.[17]
An expansion set for the Educational EV3 Core Set (set number: 45560), which can be bought separately, contains 853 Lego elements. However, the expansion set and the educational set combined do not contain enough components necessary to build most robots of the retail set. This contrasts with NXT; the educational set combined with the resource set could build any of the retail designs. The EV3 educational set was released a month earlier than the retail set, on August 1, 2013. Robots that can be built with the core education set are the EV3 educator robot, the GyroBoy, the Colour Sorter, the Puppy and the Robot Arm H25. Robots that can be built with the expansion set are the Tank Bot, the Znap, the Stair Climber, the Elephant and a remote control. Another robot that can be built with a pair of core sets and an expansion set is the Spinner Factory.[45]
Thanks to these parts SPIKE Prime is the first LEGO robotics kit that can be realistically used to conduct a full robotics lesson (introduction, building, programming, testing) in primary school in just 45 minutes. Such a short lesson is, unfortunately, likely to limit the use of this set. Nonetheless, students will gain practical knowledge and complete a project during one lesson, which brings valuable educational benefits.
One might say it's too few electronics, another would argue that it's too many. Everything depends on your goals and expectations. To assess the real value of the electronic components of an educational tool, you must remember that the most noteworthy is their potential in the classroom.
What's clearly visible from the electronics of the set is that the LEGO team learns from mistakes, and decided to use the experience of the last dozen years to create the best educational tool to date that is also fun to use.
SPIKE app is nice and intuitive in use. The interface is aesthetically pleasing, clear and functional, which was not always the case for older programmable products from LEGO Education. The entire interface, educational materials and even help have been translated into polish, which we greatly appreciate on behalf of all teachers in Poland.
Let's start with the roots. Word Blocks were created on the base of the gold standard of modern education, Scratch, so they draw on almost 20 years of experience of this award-winning educational tool. The same age recommendations apply: the language works best for children between the ages of 8 and 16. Colorful blocks with text and parameters are stacked together to create programs that will animate robots and other constructions assembled from LEGO elements.
Although programming SPIKE Prime robots in Python is not as beginner-friendly as it should be, it is still valuable from the point of view of education. Students can still learn the "real" text-based programming language used by millions of people around the world on a daily basis. They can discover how to use Python at a very young age and draw on this knowledge for years to reach various goals. They can gain an important advantage they might need in their adult lives.
As a result, the kit is easy to use for teachers and students, has exceptionally durable parts even with intense use, and provides a myriad of possibilities for building and programming. SPIKE Prime really is a comprehensive educational tool for years.
Since that's the case, should schools get rid of the older kits? No! They are still high quality educational tools, even if they are no longer officially supported by the producer. Even though in the context of school education the older sets score a little lower overall, they offer unique advantages, such as daisy chaining (EV3) or a very good icon-based programming language (WeDo 2.0). You can read more about them in our reviews.
The price of one SPIKE Prime #45678 set is currently $359.95. The cost is comparable to the original price of MINDSTORMS EV3, and is likely to increase. However, after taking into account everything you get with the box, i.e. the number of electronics, the durability of parts, the quality of the app, and the educational possibilities of the set, the price is justified.
Students use either icon blocks, word blocks (default), or Python code toprogram their models. The programming environment is adapted from theScratch editor,familiar to many students already from early STEAM education in school.
Apart fromplatform-specific apps,LEGO also offers the SPIKE web app, which is accessible atspike.legoeducation.com. The app isnot cached in the browser, so users always need to be connected tothe Internet for the web app to work.
By allowing students to communicate with physical LEGO models from within thebrowser, the Web Serial and Web Bluetooth APIs open up a world of possibilitiesfor educational, creative, and entertainment applications. Students will alwayshave the latest version of the app without needing to update it.
There are five playful curriculum units in Spike Essentials that each include 7-8 lessons and 6-10 hours worth of learning material in each. The educational set also comes with five hardware components as well as 449 Lego bricks, including replacement bricks.
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