Sowing Contagious and Effective Vision

Those of you familiar with Dr Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, know that to be effective one must "begin with the end in mind."

What happens if you don't?

When the going gets tough, the ability to buckle-down and work through problems requires a vision for success....the ends, the finish line, the glorious goal!

So what do you do if you're just a kid...?

Last month nearly 500 Central Texas K-12 students gathered together for LEGO MINDSTORMS Mania. The event was a fitting celebration of the end of the school year - allowing the students to show off their robotics skills for friends and family.

LEGO MINDSTORMS is a very cool robotics tool set designed specifically for children. Its construction is based on LEGO Bricks and its intelligence is powered by LabVIEW (yes, a MINDSTORMS toolkit is available).

This was the seventh annual LEGO MINDSTORMS Mania event, which is designed to get students "excited" about science and engineering. To adults, "excited" means the kids will want to study science and math. To the kids, it is a vision of success, a hill to be conquered....its beginning with the end in mind!




After students participate in MINDSTORMS Mania, they can look forward to getting involved with FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).

The FIRST Robotics Competition is a team competition with a six-week time frame. These teams are each issued a standard set of parts and they use these tools to build robots and compete in a series of competitions.

NBC Nightly News also ran this story on the FIRST Robotics Competition.