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I have a lot of laptops with the 'old' LabVIEW Mindstorms. I am about to start teaching Lego robotics to a homeschooling group I'm a part of.

Here's what I have:

  • a few old Windows laptops with the LabVIEW Mindstorms
  • my Mac running Big Sur (that therefore cannot run the LabVIEW Mindstorms)

I can do a few things to make this work, like I can finagle running the old Mindstorms on the new macOS - (or try to anyhow).

But my question is: Would it be worth it? Assuming that its not impossible for me to run the old LabVIEW on my laptop AND assuming I can run the newer programs on the OLD laptops. Which would be better to teach "today's students"?

Is there something about the LabVIEW that would be worth kids learning over using scratch to program these robots?

I hope this all makes sense - its late and my head is spinning from all the information!

Thank you in advance!

ETA: The age group I'm teaching will be 13-15.

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    I don't have a good answer, but others who do might be helped by knowing what ages you're looking at. Also, I tell people it's better to have a short-term solution that the kids actually use over a lasts-forever method that they give up on. Is there any harm in just starting with Scratch, and possibly moving to more advance software if it seems appropriate? Whatever gets them hooked is best!
    – RSchulz
    Commented Apr 20, 2021 at 4:07
  • That's certainly good advice - especially if one is easier to catch on to. The target age group is 13/14/15 although we'll dip into some younger siblings to keep them occupied if its at all possible.
    – DAWN SPATTA
    Commented Apr 20, 2021 at 11:19
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    Questions soliciting opinions are not the best for the format of this Q&A site since there isn't a "correct" answer. But my opinion is that if you have enough computers with the old software on it, go with it. If the students already have extensive experience with Scratch, it might be worth trying the new programming software (requires Windows 10), otherwise probably not worth it. See bricks.stackexchange.com/questions/11416/… for info about macOS and the LabView software.
    – David Lechner
    Commented Apr 24, 2021 at 0:19

1 Answer 1

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I have used Scratch and I did use Lego Mindstorms. I would prefer Scratch because its easier to learn the codes and there is way more coding blocks. Just that its a bit harder to connect your robot to Scratch so just follow their instructions carefully. Hope this helped.

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