LEGO Education

MINDSTORMS Education NXT Blog Comment Policy

The MINDSTORMS Education NXT blog is a place for educators, parents, and LEGO MINDSTORMS Education NXT enthusiasts to learn more about the NXT and related hardware, software, and curriculum.  On comment-enabled posts, honest opinions, questions, clarifications, and civil discussion are welcome. LEGO Education requests that when commenting, you refrain from:

• Inappropriate language
• Potentially libelous comments
• Obscene or racist comments
• Personal attacks, insults, or threatening language
• Plagiarized material
• Private, personal information published without consent
• Comments totally unrelated to the topic of the post
• Commercial promotions or spam
• Hyperlinks to material that is not directly related to the discussion

LEGO Education reserves the right to review and moderate any and all comments before they are posted. Comments that do not conform to the above criteria will not be posted. LEGO Education will not delete posts that criticize the hardware, software, curriculum, or LEGO Education, providing that such comments are appropriate to the discussion at hand. Please be patient if your comment does not appear automatically, especially at weekends, evenings and holidays, as the moderation is done by real, live humans – not machines. Your name and your website URL (if provided), which you submit with your comments, are made publicly available by the WordPress Publishing Platform. Your email address is not made publicly available at any time. If you have any questions regarding this comment policy, please send them to NXT@LEGOeducation.com.

NXT and 3-D Modeling

Interested in using an industry-standard modeling program to create 3-D models of your LEGO MINDSTORMS Education NXT creations? Using the Pro/ENGINEER platform, Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy has published an extensive library of MINDSTORMS Education NXT parts. With the Pro/ENGINEER modeling program, a person can then use the NXT parts to design and animate potential projects. The Pro/ENGINEER software is made available to teachers who have participated in a Pro/ENGINEER Schools Edition workshop and gone through a practical certification process. Certified teachers are then authorized to install the software on up to 300 computers, including students' home machines.

• For more information and to download the parts files, visit:
• Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy Mindstorms NXT Solid Modeling page.
• For more information about Pro/ENGINEER Schools Edition, visit:
• Pro/ENGINEER Schools Edition
• Getting involved in the Pro/ENGINEER Schools Program.

LEGO Engineering

Have you seen the LEGO Engineering site yet? The site, developed by LEGO Education and Tufts University's Center for Engineering Educational Outreach (CEEO), features activites, news, and lots of resources and downloads to use with your NXT. LEGO Engineering Editor-in-Chief Merredith Portsmore notes that the goal for LEGOengineering.com is "to provide example activities for the classroom, teaching the same material as before but in a new way, a way that kids find very rewarding and exciting." She goes on to say that "the site aims to be a premier place for educators to find the resources and inspiration they need to use these materials effectively and easily in their classrooms." Check it out: http://www.LEGOengineering.com/

The NXT Step

If you're an NXT enthusiast, you'll want to be sure to visit The NXT STEP - Lego Mindstorms NXT Blog. Hosted by Jim Kelly, an MDP Participant, the blog has 7 contributors, many of whom were also members of the MDP group. Although the blog is focused on the retail version of the NXT, there are lots of great ideas and programming examples that educators will find exciting. In fact, Jim is even writing a book with building and programming instructions for the NXT. From Jim:

"...the book is called "LEGO Mindstorms NXT: The Mayan Adventure" and the book is targeted at ages 10 and up. No official pagecount yet, but it'll probably be over 300 pages. The book is a little different in that it uses a fictional storyline to setup situations where a NXT robot can 'save the day' so-to-speak. Each of the 5 bots has complete building instructions and programming instructions, but with commentary and explanations which I hope readers will appreciate... I don't just say "Click here" and set this to 50... I explain WHY my bots are built and programmed the way they are..."

To learn more about the book or just to read some exciting stuff about the NXT, be sure to check out The NXT Step!

NXT Light Sensor Correction

In previous posts, we said that the NXT light sensor would be fully compatible with the RCX brick.  Unfortunately, we were wrong about that. Since the NXT light sensor was designed with the NXT software in mind, it doesn't have full functionality when used with ROBOLAB 2.9, a converter cable and the RCX.

About LEGO Robotics

Please select one of the following links to learn more.