Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy

Use educational affordances of robotics to create CS-STEM opportunities for all learners

Curricula for LEGO® SPIKE PRIMEspike-platform-thumbnails.jpg

The Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy collaborated with over 30 educators from around the world to iteratively produce and refine this curriculum. It is available through CS2N.org: Coding and Computational Thinking with LEGO SPIKE Prime. 

The Coding and Computational Thinking with SPIKE Prime curriculum provides a structured sequence of programming activities in real-world project-based contexts. The projects are designed to get students thinking about the patterns and structure of not just robotics, but also programming and problem-solving more generally. This curriculum includes videos, animations, and step-by-step lessons designed to help learners foster Computational Thinking using the SPIKE Prime hardware and SPIKE programming app.

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Coding and Computational Thinking with Virtual SPIKE Prime features a programming interface and virtual robot embedded directly within the curriculum. Teachers and students can follow along with the included videos, animations, challenges, and step-by-step lessons. The scope and sequence of this virtual curriculum are very closely aligned to our Coding and Computational Thinking with SPIKE Prime curriculum for physical robots, allowing teachers to leverage both physical and virtual robots to best suit their needs. Over 75 programmable virtual environments are embedded throughout, allowing students to learn big ideas in robotics, coding, computational thinking, and mathematics. 

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RoboCamp with Virtual SPIKE Prime is a shorter, informal curriculum that teaches basic programming, proportional mathematics, robotics, and other STEM concepts at an introductory level. RoboCamp is designed with carefully scaffolded virtual activities appropriate for both formal and informal educational settings. All of the activities and challenges use a custom virtual SPIKE Prime built in a space-like environment. Get ready for take-off!  

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Curricula for LEGO® SPIKE ESSENTIAL
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Fundamentals of Coding with SPIKE Essential teaches coding and STEM concepts to elementary school students using the LEGO SPIKE Essential kit. The curriculum covers topics such as basic coding, creating algorithms, conditional statements, and loops. Students assemble robot designs with the SPIKE Essential kit based on real-world robots, which helps to foster creativity, problem-solving skills, and an understanding of how coding and robotics are used in the real world. Fundamentals of Coding with SPIKE Essential is designed to develop a foundation in coding that will prepare students for more advanced programming concepts in the future.

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Curricula for LEGO® MINDSTORMS EV3

The Introduction to Programming with Virtual LEGO EV3 curriculum features a programming interface and virtual robot embedded directly within the curriculum. Teachers and students can follow along with the included videos, animations, challenges, and step-by-step lessons designed to help beginners learn coding and computational thinking using a virtual LEGO EV3, the physical LEGO® MINDSTORMS EV3 hardware, or even a combination of both.

The Introduction to Programming with Virtual LEGO EV3 curriculum includes over 70 virtual environments so that students can follow along with all lesson content. The curriculum contains all of the material for both physical robots AND virtual robots, so educators that need to balance both (as is the case with many hybrid learning implementations) don’t need to also balance multiple curricula. 

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Introduction to Programming provides a structured sequence of programming activities in real-world project-based contexts. The projects are designed to get students thinking about the patterns and structure of not just robotics, but also programming and problem-solving more generally. This curriculum includes videos, animations, and step-by-step lessons designed to help beginners learn behavior-based programming using the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 hardware and EV3 Classroom Scratch-based programming software.

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The Introduction to Programming EV3 Curriculum is a curriculum module designed to teach core computer programming logic and reasoning skills using a robotics engineering context. It contains a sequence of 10 projects (plus one capstone challenge) organized around key robotics and programming concepts. 

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The Introduction to Programming the EV3 Curriculum is a curriculum module designed to teach core computer programming logic and reasoning skills using a robotics context. The curriculum consists of three chapters (Basic Movement, Sensors, and Program Flow) and each chapter is broken into units that teach key robotics and programming concepts.

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The ROBOTC Intermediate Programming for LEGO® MINDSTORMS EV3 includes in-programming lessons for text-based ROBOTC, engineering challenges, step-by-step videos, support material, and more.

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Curricula for LEGO® MINDSTORM NXT

This multimedia curriculum is an ideal tool to introduce robots into the middle or high school classroom. It provides teachers with an engaging program to teach STEM concepts utilizing the LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT Robots. Students learn how to program basic robot behaviors using motors and rotation, sound, light, touch and ultrasonic sensors. Fifteen in-depth research lessons are based on real-world robots. Step-by-step videos teach students how to use the programming language, build robots, basic robot behavior, use of sensors, robot competition, etc.

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The second series in the Robotics Engineering line of products. Robotics Engineering Vol. 2 – Guided Research takes students through several STEM-based projects, and also goes through the entire engineering process using an Engineering design projects. Programming lessons are included that teach students about programming using the more advanced blocks in the NXT programming language.

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Use LEGO® Robots to teach scientific principles around speed, heat, sound, and color. Students will design and develop robotic prototypes that will use powerful features built into the NXT to collect data and report it back in the form of graphs and tables. Students will use this data to form conclusions that cement their understanding of these important and technological concepts. The culminating engineering activity is a robot bridge inspection project.

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The NXT Video Trainer 2.0 is a multimedia curriculum designed to teach behavior-based programming to students, teachers, and coaches alike, using the LEGO® MINDSTORMS Education NXT Software. In a classroom or workshop setting, it is also designed to act as the teacher’s assistant, driving primary instruction with over 70 short videos, animations, and built-in Check Your Understanding questions that allow learners to work at their own pace, freeing up instructors to provide more strategic assistance. 

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Teaching is a craft and every teacher does it differently. This curriculum is designed to teach “engineering process” and “programming”. The Robotics Academy has developed this curriculum to help teachers to teach and students to learn those competencies. The Robotics Academy is committed to helping teachers use robotics to teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

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