I wondered if any one else is using ModKit in a classroom environment has found it challenging for a number of reasons:
1 - Unability to have everyone in a class say 23 students all login using the same account, but then being hindered by the fact that no more then 10 projects can be saved. So if you have students all write a simple program and ask them to sable their project under the firstName as soon as there are more then 10 projects stored you are no longer able to store them.
2 - This is also an issue when you write for example a number of sample program stubs to the have the kids work from.
3 - It would be absolutely nice if kids could store their projects to a Flashdrive and retrieve fro ma flash drive.
We love using the ModKit paradigm of teaching programming at the Elementary school level, it fits nice with Scratch as an other platform to get kids involved and understanding code. Scratch lets you download and retrieve from your coal computer - which allows us to have all the students retrieve for example a a program sample stub while teaching and then work from and store their own versions / enhancements back onto their computer - in our case a file share.
This would make it possible to used ModKit online without needing to have an online account which makes it much wider acceptable within the school community, where many of us have a lot of hoops to go through as it comes to getting kids online accounts.
So I wondered if there has been any consideration given to:
1 - for now lifting the number of project files you can store using a single account
2 - add the file store/retrieve option onto a local computer without requiring you to login
Additional having a stand-alone version which does not require Internet access on a computer to modify your code is also much appreciated as now during competition events you are only able to modify/adjust your code if there is network connectivity, which is not always likely especially in various different public schools.
I agree that a standalone option would be great for schools. Perhaps Modkit people are working on that, as the current version of their editor does allow to save modkit files to the desktop. Although confusingly, it actually saves my files to my downloads directory and gives them a .mkv extension (which I think is also used for some video file types).
I cannot open this saved .mkv file in the online editor, but the editor does now appear to have a “My PC” tab in the browse button, (currently unavailable). So maybe they are working to allow us to save and upload our own programs to PC in future.
The choice of using an offline or online editor would be ideal for schools I think.
Yes, having trouble downloading program to Brain. When I press play in Modkit it says “error playing”. When I press the download button nothing happens, no error message.
Hi Steve: Please ensure that your brain is up to date by downloading and running the VEX firmware update utility: http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexiq/software/firmware/ After that I would restart Modkit Link and then reload the Modkit for VEX editor at http://modkit.com/vex/editor If this problem happens again after updating, usually unplugging and replugging the brain (USB cable) will fix any connection issues. And as always you can send more info to [email protected] for a support team member to follow up with you.
All: Yes we are planning the release of an offline (desktop) version of Modkit for VEX. We’re in the final internal testing stages for a trial version and will have more info on its public release soon. Thanks for your interest in Modkit for VEX and your patience as we finalize this trial release. We agree that this is the best solution for schools and serious competition teams and look forward to your feedback once we can get this out more publicly.
Steve: Also to be clear you will need to download the program before “playing” it. The play button is just a convenience feature which has the same effect as selecting the program on the VEX IQ brain itself. But if no program is in the selected slot (by previously pressing the download button to left of play button), it will have no effect.