Lawrence+Cato

Lego Education Mindstorm – My Preferred Innovation Lego Education Mindstorm is a technology tool that allows students to use programmable building blocks to build robots and have them do specific tasks. The tool was first launched in 1998 and it was designed with calibrated levels of difficulty so a kindergarten child can work with it and an adult can also use Lego Mindstorm to enhance his/her problem solving and creativity skills. Pezella-Granlund et al (2005) reported that even the design of robots can influence the way technology is perceived. Lego Mindstorm comes as a construction set but it enables students to cover topics in Engineering, Math, Science and Technology while having fun. Tremendous research has been done on Lego Mindstorm and the tool is now managed and run by the staff of Carnegie Mellon University who continue to do research and improvement on the product. Resnick et al. (2008) did further research into Lego Mindstorm and they revealed how to use Mindstorm to teach Art and Story Telling among other areas. Lego Mindstorm will be added to the existing curricula of our secondary schools here in Grenada and we expect to see a noticeable improvement in the students’ performance in Mathematics, Science and Information and Communication Technology. Existing research shows that the tool will motivate students and they will find a new academic life in Lego Mindstorm.

I have chosen this innovation instead of the others because I have done some research into all of them and I found Lego Mindstorm to be the most valuable in terms of meeting our needs in the education sector. This is the reason I am experimenting with Lego Mindstorm at this point in time. In fact, I secured funding from the World Bank to do a pilot project with Lego Mindstorm in five schools here in Grenada. The project launches on September 30, 2009 after which there will be continuous monitoring and evaluation.. I have looked at how NASA and other organizations use Lego Mindstorm and I became convinced that Grenada needs to experiment with Mindstorm in order for our students to have more problem solving skills and to attain better Math and Science scores. The Eno board is a very useful innovation but the board does not address the areas of critical thinking and Problem solving that we are grappling with. The major benefit of the Mobile Computer Labs is that it increases access to technology but it may not enhance the problem solving and analytical skills of students. In other words, the other two innovations are also exciting but Lego will help us address an immediate need in our school system.

The innovation I have chosen, Lego Mindstorm does put the students at an advantage because of the potential for techniques and skills they could develop. It is very compatible because the software runs on most common operating systems and even earlier versions of most of them. The complexity is made to match the cognitive level of the user who can try the kit over and over or just observe how it is used by others. Because the system is a construction type set, the communication is mainly face-to-face and this fosters interaction among users and queries are clarified very quickly.

Grenada is poised to use such a system since the government has put policies in place to increase access technology in schools and to produce a knowledge-based economy. Many teachers and principals have been made change agents for the infusion of technology and presence of new and improved technologies is really a norm in our country. The government’s thrust into ICT was made about six year ago but I believe the time is now right as our people are now ready and willing to let technology help us improve our level of education and our quality of life.

References Mitchel Resnick et al (2008). New Pathways into Robotics: Strategies for Broadening Participation e Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol 11,( 3).

Pezalla-Granlund et al (2005). Rethinking Robotics- Approaches and Ideas. Association of Science and Technology Centers. Retrieved September 19, from []


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