Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher: EV3

In 22 substantive chapters, Dr. Kee introduces programming exercises, providing early and easy successes for the students, before going deeper into programming concepts such as flowcharting and planning.Along the way appropriate math is introduced, and enterprising teachers can further expand the concepts to include more physics concepts.The book's focus is primarily on LEGO EV3 robotic programming, as you might expect, but Dr. Kee also introduces the EV3 Content Editor, an embedded presentation development environment that will enable teachers to develop student challenges and the students to document and explain their work.Sensor thresholds are well explored and students should complete the course with a good understanding of the concepts.Further, mechanical concepts such as gears and levers are explored in several exercises, giving the students hands-on experience.The book's final two chapters provide ready-made worksheets for the Busy Teacher as well as building instructions for the core models and tools used in the lessons.Classroom Activities for the Busy Teacher: EV3 by Dr. Damien Kee lives up to the title and continues his strong tradition of NXT and WeDo LEGO activity books.As someone who's been working with kids and LEGO robots for the last 4 years, this is a valued addition to my robotics library.

I'm using this resource in a homeschool co-op environment with 5 boys ages 9-11. Each lesson in the book is designed to utilize about 5 hours of time. We don't have that much each week, so I split the lessons between weeks, and have the boys work on the student pages and programming at home in between sessions. It is taking us about 2 weeks per "week" of lessons. The boys are learning a lot, and the format of the lessons is easy for me as a parent teacher to utilize, even with limited EV3 background. There is a nice mix of theory and practice in the book to discuss, giving a great foundation. The math is manageable for the kids at the level I'm teaching with a little help here and there for those who hadn't encountered circumference or pi yet.

For the price I was expecting something a bit more than this book. Its a nice basic robot, and the attachments are ok. Once I get a bit more time I'll update my review.

Progress in robotics is expected to have revolutionary impact on human society in the century (self-driving cars, drones etc) so it is clearly important to teach robotics in schools. I chose this text as the basis for a robotics course that I taught to students aged 13-16 with great success. I like the strong emphasis on the students doing the programming themselves rather than being spoon-fed. The themes are well chosen and motivational (planetary exploration, assisting the infirm, mini-golf…) and the use of a standard robot base simplifies the teacher’s work. The book presents a 50 hour course but many teachers will need to make a selection of exercises to fit tighter time restraints, as I did. The students get lots of experience writing programs and working with different sensors but the book does not present some of the more advanced programming concepts such as data wires, variables and arrays. I hope there will one day be a sequel aimed at older kids. The author kindly makes the student worksheets freely downloadable from his website. Note that the book is also available in PDF form in English and French from the author’s website.

I have been teaching Lego Robotics for almost twenty years (from even before there was a Lego Mindstorms; it was called the Lego Dacta Control Lab). I've taught classes at the elementary, middle school, high school, and even at the junior college level. So I can highly recommend this book. Mr. Kee knows his stuff and has created a curriculum I wish I had when I was teaching. In fact, now that I'm retired, his book has inspired me to call up the local elementary school and see if they'd like me to start an after school robotics program for them.Marc HelfmanKenwood, CA

this has been a great resource for my robotics team. We all learned a lot that will improve our season this year. the book arrived quickly and I love that I can download the student worksheets from the website so I didn't have to go through hassle of getting book to lay flat to make copies! I even recommended the NXT version to another team who was looking for helpful resources.

I was thrilled with this book. I purchased it as a guide to teaching my own children. It would make a GREAT program for a teacher looking to explore the Lego Mindstorms EV3 educational kit. The way the material is presented is perfectly staggered from beginning techniques to more advanced material. Each lesson builds on the last in a great way.

I bought this book because all the great reviews - most of them, but I have to say, it is not what I expected. I opened the book only to find some graphs, some instructions of how to build few basic robots, and relatively basic robotic programing. Why am I upset?The price is quite high for the actual content of this book, and you could find any of this information on Youtube for free.No disrespect intended, but how does anyone give it 4 stars? Some of the comments were so impressive that I rushed to buy this book, but only to be disappointed.My son is eleven years old, has 3 EV3s, is enrolled in a robotics class, and is very good at programing his Ev3s. So I thought this book would be a great addition to other books that he already owns, but unfortunately this book is for complete beginners.