How do you get a bunch of kids excited about learning how to program? Try adding Legos with motors!

Every Monday night for the rest of the summer my son and some of his friends are taking a class on building robots with Legos. How cool is that? They are doing it through a company called Davinci’s Kids. He took the first course last fall and really had a great time with it.

Basically each week they are presented with a challenge. They build a working Lego robot using the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics kit and then program the robot to perform certain tasks.

Last night was week #2 of the course and their mission as part of Alien Encounter was to design a plow for their robot that would push the most rocks across the finish line. Here is a video of my son’s last robot performing the task. One of the wheels got stuck and it ended up making the plow turn.

About 12 years ago I taught the Lego Robotics program to kids in a private school setting. The curriculum is extremely sound and a great way for kids to begin learning the basics of programming in general.

It’s not an iPhone or some other fancy new gadget. As a matter of fact, they’ve been around for a while, but still, I am so happy to finally get my own iPod! I was tired of listening to Hannah Montana on my daughter’s iPod and classic rock on my husband’s iPod was just not my style. Plus I wanted one small enough to put in an arm band so I can easily wear it while walking the dog or riding the recumbent bike.

So, Friday the 13th was my lucky day, because my well-trained kids had been passing on the message for months to my husband and they all got me a hot pink iPod nano for my birthday.

After dinner I immediately headed to the CD cabinet and grabbed some of my favorite oldies (Alphaville, Depeche Mode, Elvis Presley, The Replacements) and began ripping them onto my iPod. Once I made it through the stack I headed over to iTunes to grab some new tunes from The Kaiser Chiefs, Mika, Robbie Williams and Fatboy Slim to round out my very eclectic collection.

Now it’s your turn. What are the best sites for staying up to date on the best tips and such for iPods?