Andy Larmand

The most recent and, honestly, probably most impressive robot from Sphero, the RVR, is an awesome option for coding across grade levels. It boasts more power than previous Sphero models and students can truly embrace a hacker mentality by connecting third-party hardware, like the Raspberry Pi, micro:bit, Arduino, and littleBits.

Through this Sunday (Father’s Day), we’re sharing special savings on Dash Robot bundles and additional access to the Class Connect platform. There are a bunch of bundles that are part of this promotion and you can find them all on our store! Just make sure you select the one-year subscription length option for any qualifying sale product to save.

Whether you’re a fan of student-led learning or you’re looking for a new way to keep kids engaged, we have a potential solution to tell you about. Mentimeter is a real-time communication platform educators can use to pose questions and receive feedback from students in any type of learning environment, helping make learning more interactive.

Most students weren’t afforded the same learning opportunities in the last year and some struggled to access any educational experiences at all. The debate, however, centers on what constitutes ‘loss’ and how that relates to each student. So, what do we know? It’s incredibly difficult to pinpoint levels of learning loss and how they differ among students.

The Sphero team recently announced that their newest addition, the Sphero indi, is available for pre-order. This versatile and friendly looking robot will serve as their first effort to engage early elementary students in robotics and coding. In the meantime, we thought we’d explore some of its features a bit, including what sets it apart!

We’re excited to share our latest Eduporium Featured Educator interview with our community! This month, we hear from Andrew McDonald, who’s an educational consultant and faculty member of the Engineering Secondary School at the University of Ottawa and, like so many other educators around the world, he’s had to get creative over the last year.

Some students need intentional effort to be made in order to settle into their learning situation, feel more comfortable participating, or use it as a base to become more social with their peers. If educators don’t have the time for one-on-one conversations, they can still communicate using Synth—the focus of this week’s Rising Resources post!

STEM education and coding in particular do not have to come to a halt just because education has been altered. Teachers around the world have been going to great lengths since March to continue delivering instruction with the highest quality possible and that can include STEM experiences in remote learning if you have a sound strategy.

We’ve awarded our $500 EdTech grant for the month of May to Marylin Prysi! Marylin is a teacher at the Villas Elementary School in Fort Meyers, FL and currently designing a STEM lab. She works with a large amount of minority students and helps create beneficial STEAM experiences for them to learn and grow together!

With three different levels, students can try block coding, hybrid coding, and text coding while controlling a variety of the Root’s features. There have also been updates to the Root, including new Android and computer or laptop compatibility. We’ll introduce you to the iRobot coding simulator as well and explore its amazing features!