We continued the Eduporium Spring webinar series this week and welcomed our friends from Robotical. We joined Robotical’s Head of North America, Hal Speed, and hosted educators who were new to the Marty Robot V2. Beginning with the basics, Hal showed educators how to get started with the Marty V2. You'll learn how to place the battery in the robot, how to use Marty in unplugged mode, and how to access the Marty the Robot V2 app. Kids can use it in unplugged mode (Pre-K and kindergarten), in remote control mode (early elementary), and then program it with block or text code once they're ready. If you missed the live broadcast, check out the replay below to catch up on everything we covered!
Starting with screen-free coding, when the Marty Robot is in unplugged mode, it can read and respond to color codes. These color cards come in each of the Marty robotics kits and there are five in total: purple (slide right), blue (slide left), green (move forward), yellow (move backward), and red (stop and dance). Hal showed how to turn the robot on as well as how students can identify their personal Marty V2 Robot if the whole class is using them, which helps make things much easier on teachers. Then, once they master unplugged coding with the Marty, they can progress to block coding.
Students can program their Marty Robot using the Marty the Robot V2 app on iOS, Android, and Chromebook devices. It works best on tablets and Chromebooks with access to the Google Play Store. When first powering on the app, it searches for robots in the vicinity. Students can then select their robot, give it a name, and begin coding. Using MartyBlocks Jr. (based on Scratch Jr.), students can start exploring coding concepts like computational thinking, debugging, events, conditionals, and more—beginning as early as second grade. They can also use the Marty V2 in unplugged or remote control mode as early as Pre-K.
As they move on, they can use MartyBlocks (based on Scratch coding) in Grades 4 and up. With these activities, which educators can access on the Robotical Learning Portal, students can explore conditionals, loops, logic, and incorporate any of the Marty's various sensors. Then, once they're ready for Python coding in Grades 6-8, they can try compound conditionals, nested loops, functions, and more! Once again, we thank Hal for hosting this webinar and thank everyone who attended. If you have any questions about the Marty V2 or Marty Class Packs, contact us anytime. And, follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more.
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