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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Help! Psychology of learning robotics
Cc: arnette@ee.uwa.edu.au
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 1994 14:32:59 GMT
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In article <CwKIDq.2B6@draco.nova.edu>,
Jeanette Phillips  <arnette@ee.uwa.edu.au> wrote:
>
>I'm currently studying robotics at UWA.  I'd like to start researching
>how people learn technical things (especially robotics).  How can this
>learning process be made easier?  What makes Lego Technics so much
>fun to work with?  
>
>A case in point:
>
>I spent some time connecting Lego Technics to a PC via the Lego Dacta
>interface
>box.  Later, I spent some time connecting a circuit that I had designed
>to a 
>PC.  Even though my circuit was very simple, I was much more reticent
>to connect my ciucuit to the PC than the Lego interface.  Why?
>--
>Jeanette Phillips       arnette@swanee.ee.uwa.edu.au             
>Masters Preliminary Student (Robotics)
>Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering
>The University of Western Australia
--------------------------------------
Well, you didn't have to really figure out how to build any subassemblies
or get your hands dirty, did you? You didn't have to think of EVERYTHING!
Like the way to make the interface, the shape of things were limited by the
parts the made available, and so you didn't need to think about all topics
of construction at once! And everything was good old "friendly" plastic!

Kids are being taught that plastic won't hurt them and is their friend from
toys made of it, and metal is being vilified as a demon, as in knives,
guns, clubs, workman's tools such as axes, saws, and electric/gas powered
nasties. Actually, recycling metals is much more environmentally simple
than plastics, even though we COULD make plastics which were reusable as
containers and such if only people would stop throuwing them away or
demanding that they be throw-away by nature!

Thus, when you played with plastic things, you had no fear of them, having
been already pre-designed by "toy-makers" not "to hurt you or blow up the
house or your computer"!!! Very BAD precedent actually. I don't think I
have seen wooden or metal toys in so long now, kids are alienated from
those substances. You never hear of a toy maker of plastic toys for three
year olds being sued unless he made a part removable that a kid could choke
on! Fischer-Price has made the child's world all smooth plastic with
rounded edges! No wonder kids seem to hurt themselves more now with adult
tools when they buy them for their own use. I was helping a guy the other
day build a deck, and he was so paranoid of power tools that he was shook
by the act of using them! He was a young guy, and the only thing I think he
had used before was his computer and school books! I had been using power
