RE: VEX Robots. Practical STEM in your classroom!
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These look awesome. I wish I would have had access to these when I was growing up. I might have to donate a couple to my daughters school. How many to you want in a classroom? Or per child? Do you have a recommendation on which kits to get?
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The kits are quite expensive, but they do have entire classroom kits that the schools can purchase if there is an interest in them.
Personally, I think the VEX GO (gr 3-5) and VEX IQ (gr 6+) would be the two best options to kickstart that STEM bug. Students statistically start "hating" STEM subjects by grade 4 so it's best to find a way to build that love for STEM early and these kits do just that. The STEM lab are great for the teachers because they're designed to be done in any order. The labs are also designed to only take 40 minutes to complete so a teacher doesn't have to worry about going over time and conform to several education standards.
There is also VEX VR which allows the student to code a bot and then run the program right in their browser! No kit required. Great for testing code before applying it to a bot if kits are limited. You could have 1-2 robots the kids take turns uploading their code to.
Something I forgot to mention in the post is that there is also a grant program to help fund student travel and accommodations while attending Vex tournaments around the region, nation and WORLD!
Nice! Unfortunately, you didn't actually answer my question. lol How many kits per classroom? Or per child? Like I kit for 10 kids? Or one kit per classroom? Or one kit per 2 kids? What's optimal?
Bahahaha derp. Sorry I initially did write all that out, but then accidentally refreshed the page and had to rewrite it and forgot to put that part in.
The labs are designed to be collaborative between the students so 1 kit for every 2-4 kids is good. One kid is the builder, the other is the journalist who documents their progress, what they think the bot will do based on their programming and what the bot actually does.
Got it. Thank you! So you're right, that's a pretty big buy for a classroom. I'll have to look into it though. If the government wants to keep sending us money I might as well use it for something positive. :-)