While computer code certainly can be powerful, it doesn’t necessarily have to be complex. Starting with core languages designed to ease children into coding, they’re often just as effective as those they would use in mastering more challenging elements. In fact, some of the best for helping them build a foundation are graphical or icon-based and various block-text hybrids.
From kindergarten through high school, coding helps all students develop real-world hard and soft skills—even if they are not planning on pursuing a computer science career. Plus, getting started isn’t intimidating either and, in fact, introducing programming often involves some extremely simple CS tools in kindergarten before working in those with more STEM possibilities.
Known simply as the UKIT, there are three versions currently on our store: the Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced kits. The basis of each of these UBTECH robotics kits, including the Beginner Kit, is that students use the pieces, which include wheels, servo motors, connecting cables, and other plastic hardware, to build programmable models using interactive guides.
The Tello EDU’s a compact, lightweight classroom drone with a purposeful design that helps to enable seamless integration in K-12 classroom coding projects, STEAM experiences, and CTE curricula. One of the signature DJI drones, students can program it using Scratch, Swift, or Python and utilize the Tello app to redefine real-world lessons in many different subjects.
Though it’s ideal, having a physical robot is not always an option for students learning outside of the classroom and that’s why these various virtual resources have become so important. Among those is the Shape Tracer game from Ozobot, a cool, Web-based platform students can use to code a virtual Ozobot right on their screen.
Modular Robotics’ Cubelets are a classroom and makerspace favorite thanks to their low entry point and high ceiling. Students are initially attracted to the block shape as well as the easy time they have with connecting the blocks together and remain engaged thanks to the progression of programming options Cubelets provides.
For this week’s Rising Resources, we took a look at the coding resource, PictoBlox. It’s created and supported by the STEMpedia team and allows students to create games, design their own interactive projects, and build their own programs for controlling robots. It can be used to introduce students to block coding and reduce intimidation.
The Ozobot Bit is a pocket-sized robot packed with a lot of tech, including optical sensors for detecting lines and color codes, an LED light, a strong polycarbonate shell, and a rechargeable battery. For teachers who want multiple Bits, the Ozobot Bit Classroom Kit (which comes with 18 Bots) is an affordable way to do so.
The Ozobot Evo is an easy-to-use, versatile, and powerful coding robot for teaching coding and computational thinking along with showing kids how their block code translates to JavaScript text code. Now, it’s even easier for educators to maximize its potential thanks to the introduction of the Evo Educator Entry Kit since it’s designed exclusively for teachers
There are two books kids can follow—one with instructions for building the computer and another that details all of the ways kids can then code with it. Well, now Kano has a few new models (as well as classroom packs), but for this edition of the Eduporium Experiment, we’re taking a look at the Kano Touch Kit and how kids can become engineers.
