News

I'm often asked what are the benefits of 3D printers in schools. Too often people look at the 'product' that is being made by the students and incorrectly believe that the educational value is in this final product. They look at the bookmark / bag tag / coin that is painfully created in the 3D printer and wonder how 'useful' that could possibly be.

However, this is not the right way to look at the problem. The real educational value in these projects is more along the lines of the process that students follow.

I recently ran a multi-day STEM camp robotics day for the University of the Sunshine Coast. Here are a few of the projects we did - Mobility Challenge, Robot Wave, Ball throw and Musical Instrument.

This article first appeared in BrickJournal Issue 38, 2016
Getting your robot to Speak (not just the ‘official’ phrases)The sounds that are built into the EV3 system are numerous and awesome. Someone obviously spent a lot of time choosing, recording, cleaning them up and I’m really thankful, truly I am! However, in the 127 preloaded sounds that comes with the EV3-G software, nowhere could I find the phrase “Number 5, is ALIVE!!”.

This article first appeared in BrickJournal Issue 36, 2015
My Blocks - The basics. My Blocks are a way to represent lots of instructions with just a single block.

This article first appeared in BrickJournal Issue 35, 2015
Adding Personality. While it great achievement to get your robot up and moving, and an even better achievement to have it reacting to its surroundings, sometimes it’s just plain fun to give your bot a little personality. I’m going to outline 2 different ways you can achieve this.