Introducing LEGO STEM

Hi! My name is Kurt Schwartz and I'm starting a new STEM unit this quarter with the middle school students! About once every week or two, I will be leading a unit about math and engineering, using LEGO education Spike Prime (robot building and programming) and LEGO BricQ (physics and engineering) kits.

I've been an (electrical) engineer for over 38 years, many of which I spent professionally training other engineers how to design chips using computer languages.
I currently work for Apple at our engineering site in Beaverton, where I'm on the chip design and verification team.

This week was our first lesson, where the students first learned about the "factorial" mathematical operator, and how it is used to calculate how many different combinations of some size can be made from a given number. The students calculated that we can make 15 different possible partner pairs from the students in the class. Ask your student to explain factorial! This will help them review and remember!

I had then planned to have the students work through the short tutorials in the LEGO iPad app, but as soon as the lids came off the LEGO tubs, there was no stopping these kids! Within minutes, we had motorized vehicles being driven across the floor, proximity sensors being used, programs being created (LEGO uses a "word block" - based programming language based on "Scratch"), and sound wave graphs being manipulated to produce weird sound effects. Who needs tutorials?! I was really impressed by the initiative, ingenuity and enthusiasm that the students demonstrated. I can tell, based on their reactions and the excitement in their eyes as they experimented, that this unit will be a huge hit!

At the end, I explained to them that what they just did - first learning the nature of things (what these things do), then creating an idea of something they wanted to make it do, then applying what they knew to make that idea a reality - that's what engineering is, and they just did it!

I look forward to see what we can accomplish this year!