The Labview Challenge

[Neat-sun]

Hello,

I started programming at age 9 - over 29 years ago. I enjoy programming in Labview for about 12 years now.
Recently I notice my kids look for games on the internet, but they don't learn programming as I did in their age and I am not happy about it. This drove me to think of an interesting idea.
It's an educational game I call The Labview Challenge, intended to run for free via internet. Kids play and learn how to program.
The game is similar to "The Incredible Machine" where you have basic building blocks and a goal.

In this game the user screen has inputs and outputs. The building blocks are Labview parts. The user places parts and wires them to build a program that solves a puzzle. It starts with easy tasks. A few examples of easy tasks:
Find the sum two numbers
Concatenate two strings (first name and last name with a space in between)
Find if a number is odd or even
With each task a few more parts are introduced.

The levels become gradually harder, and the score is made up of the number of nodes you used, or running speed.
In advanced levels finding the correct solutions is harder. You also can have really tough general programming tasks where you can use all Labview parts, and the solution that has the least parts or works fastest gets the first place. The hall of fame would have users who solved these and got the best scores. An example for a tough exercise is "find the n-th prime number" where a simple loop may be too slow. You can have annual tournaments.
The bottom line is that I would like to see my kid play a game and learn how to program.
An added value for NI would be that thousands of kids will have their first programming experience in Labview. It would be their choice for programming something for school, for college and for work.

Should be implemented by NI and placed on their servers.

Neat-sun

[altenbach]

Interesting idea, but that would need quite a bit of creativity to implement.

Should it be similar to NXT-G? Based on the Web UI builder?

As a first step, some infrastructure needs to be put in place on top of which problems can be built.

[Hueter]

Neat-sun

I am one of the K-12 specialist at NI and we have a few things in the works to help students get more hands on expereice with LabVIEW.

1. We are just about to launch the new LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS. While you could target the LEGO NXTY from LabVIEW before this is a customized version with video tutorials programming chanllages and robotics tutorials. It is just LV 2010 under the hood so students can use real LabVIEW but with a custom getting started experience so it is more fun and approachable. Your game idea could be rolled into our exisiting challange framework (@ 51 s in the video below). 

http://bit.ly/OrderLVLMSingle  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVO7EYSXAE 

2. Through the various divisions in the FIRST Robotics competition students have a chance to use programming in a large scale compeition. The youngest division (FLL) uses NXT-G the middle division (FTC) will be able to use the new LabVIEW for LEGO MINDSTORMS, and the
 varsity division (FRC) uses full blown LabVIEW with Real-Time/ Networking/FPGA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1QyM9WTF18

3. The NI K12 team just launched a new site, K12Lab.com, which will serve as a database of lesson plans and student content that shows how LabVIEW can be used in the calssroom. You can browse lessons by subject, grade, and keywords. You can also upload your own lessons; we want this to be a community site where educators and enthusiasts like yourself can share ideas and curiculm.

http://www.K12Lab.com

I would love to hear your thoughts on these resources for education, please let me know if you have any questions.

Hunter Smith

K-12 Product Marketing Engineer

[Neat-sun]

Hi,

Hey altenbach thanks for the tip. The Web UI builder is exactly what my idea needs.

The Web UI builder is a web-based user interface to create LabVIEW programs.

In order to carry out my idea all is needed is to take the web UI buider and make a few changes:

1) Add a start screen with an overview of all the levels, see which levels you've unlocked and your score for each level.

2) On each level the parts you can use are limited, and there should be a goal and given inputs and outputs,

3) I think running should be in debug mode - it'll be fascinating to see how the data "flows" in the wires, clearer for kids to understand, and you can - well - debug...

And there you have it! I know my kids will love it. And I'll certainly push them to try it.

And altenbach - I think CREATIVITY is not lacking here. It's what LabVIEW is all about! People can post ideas for nice levels right here in the discussion forum.

So what do you think, Hueter? Do you think you can pull this off?

Let's have lots of Kudos and replies so we know you all like this idea!

Neat-sun

[EvenDeejay]

I like your idea! Kids will find it easier to draw somthing rather than write something. Specially if it could go along with for example Lego Mindstorm or something. 

[CrystalTech]

Sounds like you could add this training (game) to khanacademy.com!