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I help coach a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team. When I opened up my MacBook one day there the kids went nuts seeing XCode and the iPhone simulator open. A co

by ja27 15y ago

I help coach a FIRST Tech Challenge robotics team. When I opened up my MacBook one day there the kids went nuts seeing XCode and the iPhone simulator open. A couple of them would probably rather be building iOS apps than doing robotics. One of the kids even has apps in the Android store. I think back to my middle school days and it doesn't seem that different from us tinkering with (ok, I'm old so humor me) BASIC and assembler on Commodore 64s, Atari 800s, and Apple IIes. The big differences are that kids today have a chance to publish stuff without years of building business relationships. There's also something Paul Hegarty said in his iOS class in iTunes University (another thing we didn't have as kids - access to free college-level courses): There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go.

tansey 15y ago
>There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go. This is so true. I used to build TI-83 games and physics apps for precisely this reason. Handheld devices are hugely popular among kids and the ability to go from a content consumer to a content creator is huge for them.
- inportb 15y ago
  Ohey, I used to make TI-calculator programs too, when I was 12~ish. Most people at school had a TI-83+, and lunch hour (amongst the geeks) was spent trading apps.
feralchimp 15y ago
I was part of a FIRST team in high school, I think the second year of the competitions. One other friend and I were big into RC cars at the time, and we went in with all kinds of designs for drivetrains, oil-damped suspensions, control linkages, etc. We had a decent design voice (shock/horror none of our oil-damped suspension designs made it), but essentially zero construction was performed by students in the club. Engineers from our partner org built the chassis from whole cloth using laser-cut polycarbonate and other legit machine tools. We didn't even get to watch that happen...the first rev of the mobility platform just sort of showed up one week. At the time, my friend and I were really disappointed by that. But we stuck around and I'm glad we did, because it took a TON of teamwork and not-infrequent heroism for all of us to use and improve the robot without destroying it. Software would have allowed far more room for experimentation and individual tinkering, but the group-social stakes would have always been way lower. Our robot literally had cheerleaders by the time we took it to compete in NH. That mix of fragility, anthropomorphism, weirdness, size/heft...can embody weeks of teenage group effort in a way that even a wicked-sweet app just can't. So merits on both sides, I guess. And hey, app-controlled robots? Boom.
- ja27 15y ago
  I have mixed feelings about some aspects of FIRST Robotics, mostly about how much kids really learn when they're so focused on winning. (That's actually a core value of FIRST - "What we learn is more important than what we win", but a lot of teams don't really follow that.) FRC (the biggest class of robots) gets all the press, but FIRST LEGO League is a tremendous challenge for elementary and middle school kids. No remote control, completely autonomous operation of the robot. (Well, the students can pick up the robot and run different programs, but there's no joystick drive.) The real physical robots vs. all software / simulation is a classic debate. I heard MIT's Rodney Brooks (of the "build real robots" camp) used to tell prospective grad students something like "it may take you a year longer to graduate with me but you'll have one hell of a demo tape." This year's FRC teams will be getting Microsoft Kinect sensor bars to use. Should be some interesting stuff.
code_duck 15y ago
It's also a lot easier to learn about programming these days. When I was in elementary school, I really wanted to write adventure games in Logo and Basic... learning resources were limited to books and magazines, and the naescent online world (PeopleLink? BBSs?) was out of reach. I tried to get my mother to sign us uip for Q-Link, but being ahead of her time she said I'd get molested or something. Later, as a teen I learned all I could about ARexx and AmigaShell, but never came up with the $350 it cost for a good C compiler. These days, C compilers and IDEs can be had for free... XCode is $5 and the iPhone dev. program, $100 a year. There's an endless supply of help, reference and tutorials available online, for free to anyone with an internet connection and a computer.
ja27 15y ago
It just dawned on me that I didn't mention the TEDx part of this. This kid building apps is pretty cool, but the fact that he put together a talk and presented at a TEDx is what might be even more impressive. There are many different sizes of TEDx conferences but coming up November 18-21 there are a cluster of TEDx Youth Day conferences. I think there are about 40 just in the U.S. They're a great event to take youth to or for youth to come present at. At our local one, our presenters ranged from I think 4th grade to an artist in his 60s. If you don't have a local one or can't make it, many are webcast live and almost all the talks are recorded and posted to YouTube at some point. If you have time, a lot of TEDx conferences always seem to need techies to help. And if you really have some time, organizing a TEDx of your own isn't that difficult. http://tedxyouthday.ted.com http://tedxyouthday.ted.com

by ja27 15y ago

tansey 15y ago

>There's just something neater about having your app in your hand to show people wherever you go. This is so true. I used to build TI-83 games and physics apps for precisely this reason. Handheld devices are hugely popular among kids and the ability to go from a content consumer to a content creator is huge for them.

inportb 15y ago
Ohey, I used to make TI-calculator programs too, when I was 12~ish. Most people at school had a TI-83+, and lunch hour (amongst the geeks) was spent trading apps.

feralchimp 15y ago

I was part of a FIRST team in high school, I think the second year of the competitions. One other friend and I were big into RC cars at the time, and we went in with all kinds of designs for drivetrains, oil-damped suspensions, control linkages, etc. We had a decent design voice (shock/horror none of our oil-damped suspension designs made it), but essentially zero construction was performed by students in the club. Engineers from our partner org built the chassis from whole cloth using laser-cut polycarbonate and other legit machine tools. We didn't even get to watch that happen...the first rev of the mobility platform just sort of showed up one week. At the time, my friend and I were really disappointed by that. But we stuck around and I'm glad we did, because it took a TON of teamwork and not-infrequent heroism for all of us to use and improve the robot without destroying it. Software would have allowed far more room for experimentation and individual tinkering, but the group-social stakes would have always been way lower. Our robot literally had cheerleaders by the time we took it to compete in NH. That mix of fragility, anthropomorphism, weirdness, size/heft...can embody weeks of teenage group effort in a way that even a wicked-sweet app just can't. So merits on both sides, I guess. And hey, app-controlled robots? Boom.

ja27 15y ago
I have mixed feelings about some aspects of FIRST Robotics, mostly about how much kids really learn when they're so focused on winning. (That's actually a core value of FIRST - "What we learn is more important than what we win", but a lot of teams don't really follow that.) FRC (the biggest class of robots) gets all the press, but FIRST LEGO League is a tremendous challenge for elementary and middle school kids. No remote control, completely autonomous operation of the robot. (Well, the students can pick up the robot and run different programs, but there's no joystick drive.) The real physical robots vs. all software / simulation is a classic debate. I heard MIT's Rodney Brooks (of the "build real robots" camp) used to tell prospective grad students something like "it may take you a year longer to graduate with me but you'll have one hell of a demo tape." This year's FRC teams will be getting Microsoft Kinect sensor bars to use. Should be some interesting stuff.

code_duck 15y ago

It's also a lot easier to learn about programming these days. When I was in elementary school, I really wanted to write adventure games in Logo and Basic... learning resources were limited to books and magazines, and the naescent online world (PeopleLink? BBSs?) was out of reach. I tried to get my mother to sign us uip for Q-Link, but being ahead of her time she said I'd get molested or something. Later, as a teen I learned all I could about ARexx and AmigaShell, but never came up with the $350 it cost for a good C compiler. These days, C compilers and IDEs can be had for free... XCode is $5 and the iPhone dev. program, $100 a year. There's an endless supply of help, reference and tutorials available online, for free to anyone with an internet connection and a computer.

ja27 15y ago

It just dawned on me that I didn't mention the TEDx part of this. This kid building apps is pretty cool, but the fact that he put together a talk and presented at a TEDx is what might be even more impressive. There are many different sizes of TEDx conferences but coming up November 18-21 there are a cluster of TEDx Youth Day conferences. I think there are about 40 just in the U.S. They're a great event to take youth to or for youth to come present at. At our local one, our presenters ranged from I think 4th grade to an artist in his 60s. If you don't have a local one or can't make it, many are webcast live and almost all the talks are recorded and posted to YouTube at some point. If you have time, a lot of TEDx conferences always seem to need techies to help. And if you really have some time, organizing a TEDx of your own isn't that difficult. http://tedxyouthday.ted.com http://tedxyouthday.ted.com