Mystery Warehouse Resources

Teacher and NXT coach Jessica has been busy:

"I taught your Mystery Warehouse modules last Saturday and 17 kids had a blast. Kids came in from the Kansas City and Overland Park areas (3-4 hour drive) to attend. We did it on super high-speed (5 hours total); all the kids got the beginning of the story, then two teams of three each worked on the module pre-challenges and main challenge. For the last half-hour, the entire group began with Mod 1, recapped the story, explained and demonstrated the robot, went on the Mod 2, did the same, Mod 3, etc., finishing with the end of the story. While not perfect (there's never enough time for testing), it was a great success thanks to your creativity and ingenuity."

Jessica was kind enough to also provide a handful of documents she developed, including technical notes for each module as well as a summary of her experiences and suggestions for anyone else who might like to try and run these 3 challenges. A 55Kbyte zipped file can be downloaded here and contains 5 Word documents and 1 Excel spreadsheet.

I'd like to thank Jessica for providing these documents and her feedback - and I'd love to hear from any one else who tries out the challenges.

Mystery Warehouse Parts 1, 2, and 3 can be purchased directly from LEGO Education here or from The NXT Step storefront here. Each module provides a minimum of 2 Pre-Challenge activities that provide a basic understanding of a specialty sensor and 1 Main Challenge. Part 1 covers the Compass Sensor, Part 2 the Color Sensor, and Part 3 the Acceleration/Tilt Sensor.


MARS BASE COMMAND UPDATE: I appreciate the patience from all of you regarding the 2nd module in the series. As a freelance writer, I take paid writing assignments (book and other) when they come - the current economic situation has been bad for others, but for freelance writers, graphic artists, and other "creative" types, business booms in this type of economy. The downside to it is that I'm slightly overwhelmed with the amount of writing work I have at the moment - okay, not slightly... majorly! I have about 5-6 more hours of work on Mars Base Gamma and it'll be ready to go, but I need to finish a new book project (due Dec 15) before I can dedicate any time to Gamma. Thanks for your patience and understanding.