For the last 4 years I've been coaching Lego Robotics (Jr. FLL) teams at my son's school. Teaching kids from K-4th concepts ranging from simple machines to programming is incredibly fun and rewarding. It's amazing how inventive and flexible brains are at this age. I've seen students who had never touched a computer learn to program machines they built with sensor responses and motor controls.

Much harder than learning the tools is learning to work through an engineering process with a team. Coming up with an idea, building it, testing it, and then iterating isn't always easy. Failure and iteration is part of the process, and that's a hard lesson to learn. Harder still is the dynamics of working on a team - listening, respecting others' ideas and communicating your own.

This has gone from a lightly-attended after school program to a core part of the curriculum for a class of 25 kids. Each of the two classrooms meets weekly for about 90 minutes, and even with such a short commitment, I've come to truly appreciate the work, talent and commitment of teachers. Wow. Harder than any job I've had, and way more important.

We've been using Lego's WeDo educational kits. If you haven't heard of them, check out education.lego.com. There are some great learning resources and kits there that you can't find at the toy store (and are devoid of all ninja/knight/friends theming). I've come up with some techniques and challenges for the kids over the years that I'm hoping to write up and share here soon. Stay tuned!