That’s a good thing, because robotics instruction can fill a gap many schools have in their STEM and STEAM initiatives, he adds. Though robotics is massively popular as an after-school program, it’s only now starting to be integrated into regular classroom curricula, says Mark Gura, former director of the Office of Instructional Technology for the New York City Board of Education and author of Getting Started with LEGO Robotics: A Guide for K–12 Educators. Hands-On Work with Robots Teaches Progressive Coding Skill MORE FROM EDTECH: Check out how tinker–fests and hackathons can rev up STEM interest in K–12 students. And the app has so many tutorials and instruction pieces that even if I knew nothing about it, I could give it to kids and they’d be running with it in no time.” It comes out of the box, you turn on the app, and you’re ready to code. “There’s nothing that our IT department had to do. “Literally, all you need is a tablet or Chromebook, then just plug it in and charge it,” he says. The beauty of Sphero is its simplicity, he says. That’s pretty difficult, but some of our honors kids are able to do it.” Then we’ll challenge the kids by physically drawing a slope and have them code the robot to mimic that movement. “The Sphero Edu app will pump out an actual linear equation of the bot’s movements. “The kids can code Sphero to move up a ramp for a certain amount of time at a certain speed,” Stumpenhorst says. By eighth grade, they’re incorporating the device into classroom science and math experiments, such as learning how to plot linear equations. Sixth-graders get acquainted with the Sphero at the library during lunch or after school. Now the school has about 20 models, along with apps students can use on their tablets or Chromebooks to learn the basics of programming. He bought the school’s first three or four Spheros out of his own pocket. Sphero, a programmable robot, can be found in more than 20,000 schools around the globe, including the math and science classrooms at Stumpenhorst’s school, about an hour west of Chicago. Now Stumpenhorst, director of the learning commons at Lincoln Junior High in Naperville, Ill., is a certified Sphero Hero. Josh Stumpenhorst got hooked on robotics three years ago when his son showed him the Sphero BB-8, a baseball-sized, self-propelled robot based on the Star Wars droid.
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