I’m new to the forum and VEX Robotics. I have been assigned to create a robotics team for our middle school. This team will be composed of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students. With that being said, which platform would be better for the students? Iq or EDR? I have no prior robotics experience. If this has been asked/discussed before, I am sorry.
Generally, middle schoolers are VEX EDR as VEX IQ is kind of like a developmental program for elementary schoolers.
In my personal experience and opinion, I’ve taught a group of 1st and 2nd graders with IQ. This was a very simple program for them to learn with and enjoy. For a group of young teens though, I’d advise something a little more challenging for them, hence the EDR program.
Agreed with the above statements - EDR lets you work with a variety of tools making the structures. EDR Cortex has good deep programming opportunities.
If your students are brand new to robotics, and haven’t done it before, I find VEX IQ great for 6th and potentially 7th grade development. By 8th grade VEX EDR tends to be the better option.
Personally as a member of a middle school team, I think that 6th or 7th grade is a great time to start. I started last year with starstruck and stuck with it and now am going to worlds! One thing with I.Q. if you decide to do it, make sure there are competitions in your area I did it for 2 years and had to go to Massachusetts for all of my competitions because there are none in Maine.
Definetly go for the EDR it will get them prepared for high school.
Team 1815 has a team which has 6th and 7th graders, and they have qualified for the world championship this year with complete domination in South Texas in the middle school division. Exposing students when they are younger to the more advanced curriculums, in turn, would make it a breeze for them in the future. Same thing applies to me as well. If it weren’t for my middle school years competing in VEX EDR, I wouldn’t have been as prepared as I was. I think you should start exposing them to EDR during 6th and 7th grade, and invest your money into something that they can use until they graduate as well.
As a coach who does both, IQ is much better developmentally for middle schoolers. Additionally, you tend to see a wider variety of robots being built in IQ than in VRC, where, at Worlds, 90% are the same. It uses the same programming language (or can), so, programming is no different. It is also WAY cheaper to start and manage an IQ program. For the cost of one competition VRC kit, you could have multiple IQ teams PLUS the field.
If I was starting over with my program, we would only do IQ.
We currently only use EDR with our middle school students (Grade 6-8) and have found it to be a much better experience. We tried IQ for one season as a pilot program and the kids requested to go back to EDR. We sold our IQ and continued with only EDR. Yes, it’s more expensive, but I feel the additional cost is worth it.
Our middle school is 5th grade through 8th grade. Our 5th and 6th graders do IQ, our 7th and 8th graders do VRC (or EDR, if you choose). We are hoping to extend IQ down to 4th grade into our elementary schools.
If I was to do one program for 6th through 8th grade, I would choose VRC (EDR).
Start with IQ. Hold off transitioning to EDR for as long as possible.
I coached IQ teams for four years then transitioned to EDR. In IQ it is easier to focus on the core concepts of robotics and programming. In EDR you will spend the majority of your time tightening nuts and bolts. The wiring of the current Cortex system is flimsy and difficult to use. There is little educational value in repeatedly tracking down wiring issues. Programming is much more difficult because you really need to understand and be able to use PIDs to be successful. Most middle schoolers do not have a good grasp on basic programming concepts like variables, reusable functions, scope… using PIDs is a giant leap that most are not ready for.
Having said that… V5 is going to dramatically change the way wiring and programming is done, making it a lot more like Vex IQ. The V5 wiring connections are so much better. The smart V5 motors will allow you to simply hold the position of an arm or lift, without using a PID. However, V5 won’t be released until August, there could be parts shortages, and as with any new product it will take a few months to work out issues.
Even with V5, I would still recommend starting with IQ. It is so much easier to quickly turn an idea into a robot with the snap together parts. It is also easier to iterate on a design by rebuilding the robot. In Vex IQ I encouraged my teams to build a new robot for each competition, continually innovating and improving their design. That’s just not possible with EDR because the build takes so long.
What makes EDR most compelling is the competition format. Game strategy is at a whole new level when you have an opponent. The alliance selection process helps insure that your partner is compatible.
I coach in an elementary school. We have elementary and middle school IQ and middle school EDR. For a brand new middle school program I’d recommend IQ. Very complex structures can be built with IQ, but it is much easier. It therefore allows students to experiment with different ideas much more easily/quickly. I feel it can also accommodate a wider variety of skill, interest and commitment.
I would use EDR, as it helps them in getting ready for high school
VEX IQ has allowed us to accommodate many more students. For us, we had a difficult time scaling VRC to meet the growing demand at our school. For an elementary thru middle school building, our mission was to accommodate as many students as we could, to ensure every student had the opportunity to be introduced to Robotics. As our participation grew in VRC the pressure on budget, mentors and time got very intense and tough.
Now that we’ve added VEX IQ into the mix, we’ve easily doubled the number of students involved. The kits are more cost effective, less pressure on the budget. We don’t lose structure to cutting, your equipment survives multiple seasons. The system is much more accommodating to new mentors, we’ve doubled the number of mentors which helped spread out the administrative pressure.
With this all, this season:
- We had students learn to build a DR4B lift in IQ
- We had students learn to build a Scissor lift in IQ
- We had students learn to build a Elevator lift in IQ
- In IQ we had students build an H-Drive, 4 Wheel Drive, Tank Tread Drive, and many other ‘interesting’ drives
- In IQ they still learned about gear ratios, torque, speed and power.
- In IQ they still followed the design process and learned how to do a better job at their engineering notebook.
- In IQ we saw much more prototyping and multiple iterations, much more often and faster than they prototyped in VRC. This translated to the right type of learning for younger students
- In IQ they still had to program their robot for both driver control and autonomous.
- In IQ they still programmed sensors on their robots (Touch, Ultrasonic, Gyro, Color, Bumper, & Encoders Integrated into Motors)
- In IQ they still learned to program logic that could range from simple to advanced
- In IQ the STEM Presentation accommodates students in a different way, allowing us to reach a different style of learning and student
You can deliver the right experience for each student with either IQ or VRC. Each system has strengths, but at times the VRC strengths are a bit overstated when some try to compare it to IQ. I’ve done both, and they’re both solid systems.
That’s my thought exactly. On a side note, as an educator, VEX it’s better than first at every level because of the number of kids you can reach. In a middle school, if you want to introduce a bunch of kids to robotics, your primary program is IQ. I’ve been teaching this for 3-4 periods a day for three years in middle School.
Excellent point.
We were going to move to EDR this year for 7th grade (we have had high school EDR for a while) but we would have to compare spending $300 to register and get parts (since we have them) to to $1k - $2k for EDR.
Also, we do a lot of work over the summer so V5 is out at this point.
It takes a second to fix an IQ pin. It takes a minute to fix an EDR bolt. If anything, IQ is a great prototyping platform and my VRC team benefited a lot from previous IQ experience and access to the IQ parts to prototype for EDR. There is plenty of IQ middle school teams too.
In Delaware we have about 50 Elementary VIQ teams feeding into EDR Middleschool programs. It’s been pretty successful, the IQ skills of design and engineering translate well into the EDR components.
One of the things you need to check is the availability of events. You won’t find VIQ middle school events in Delaware, they are all geared to elementary school team.
In VA we’ve got a mix of MS VRC and MS IQ. In Prince William you see mostly MS VRC because that’s what we started with years ago, while ES IQ is slowly growing, though I want to replace FLL with VEX IQ.
Most of my IQ kids after 2-3 years starting in 3rd or 4th grade are ready for EDR.
I’d love to do 6th grade new kids in IQ, 6th grade experienced in EDR, and then 7th is a mix of EDR and IQ. Then 8th grade all EDR.