Why teach GAM-BOTS?

My new curriculum will be GAM-BOTS. That is progamming (games) and robots.

Why ?

NML is a research initiative within MIT's Comparative Media Studies program. According to a 2007 study from the Pew Center for Internet & American Life, more than half of all teens have created media content and roughly a third of teens online have shared content they produced with others. In many cases, these teens are actively involved in what we are calling participatory culture.
Participatory culture stresses the role of teens as creators, circulators, connectors, and collaborators--rather than simply consumers--of media. Young people participate in the creation and circulation of media content within social networks that extend from their circle of face-to-face friends to a larger virtual community around the world.
Our central goal is to engage educators and learners in today's participatory culture. It is our belief that young people need to both make and reflect upon media and in the process, acquire important skills in team work, leadership, problem solving, collaboration, brainstorming, communications, and creating projects. http://www.mtl-peters.net/blog/


Below is a video of the Digital Youth Network as a sample of what Nichole’s programme is accomplishing with robotics. I have many

For budding Programmers

We have LEGO ROBOTS

Program and make a computer game at http://scratch.mit.edu/ or go to Alice.org for programming http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_alice

Or learn programming at
http://www.csunplugged.com/

Note: A good number of teachers using things like Gamemaker (see lite (free) and pro (20.00)). Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Maker . XNA to bring game development into their courses so students can have incentive to learn so they can create things that interest them - games.
I also see teachers teaching mobile device programming which is pretty easy in Visual Studio because of built in emulators.

And then there are robots. We have Mindstorms and XML bots from Lego.
Programs like IPRE in college and FIRST Lego League in middle schools (usually as after school programs.) There are tools out there.