Virtual robots: The power of learning from home

In these difficult days, where schools are closing their doors all over the world and finding new ways to keep their students learning, teachers are looking for tools that’ll help them deliver the knowledge, abilities, and content they are used to giving in the classroom.

Nowadays, when all educators have to think differently and creatively, the need for inclusive tools that can be used by all students is prevailing. On our end, we try to look at these challenging times as an opportunity to understand that things can be done differently. We can teach in a different way, students can learn in a different format, and skills can be delivered using tools we never even imagined before.

But how can we, for example, teach STEM remotely? How can our students learn how to program their robots while their robot is inaccessible at school? How can kids strengthen their critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and teamwork abilities if they cannot physically interact with their classmates? Well… we might have a solution to share.

Offering your students, a class format they can do from home, that has elements of gamified-learning and that is mission-based could be the perfect solution for these isolation days. Let us tell you a bit more about it.

If you are a STEM educator, your students will have to interact with robotics at some point. Good news is they can get access to robots even from home

There are multiple online solutions you can incorporate to your class to let your students experience educational robotics, without leaving their house, and without having their parents spend a lot of money.

Tools like CoderZ, for example, are an amazing way in which your students will be able to have -each one- their very own robots. Yes! more than one! One of them is a virtual version of the well-known LEGO Mindstorms EV3, and the other one is CoderZ’s robot, named Ruby.

With these robots, your students can learn how to program and code, which sensors and systems run the robot, which physics concepts and principles impact on their robots, and much more. Everything, in an easy, fun, engaging, and effective way.

By using CoderZ, your students can keep on learning all day long, and from home, by only having a computer connected to the Internet. Enabling your pupils to continue their learning experience during their free time will show you how interested and engaged they are and can be, in the STEAM fields you so passionately deliver in the classroom.

But what makes virtual robotics so popular, especially when looking for an online solution? Let us show you!

Again, we are facing some hard times, but we are optimistic. Our students can now continue strengthening and developing their life skills with a virtual robot of their own. But how does this virtual robot, especially in COVID-19 days, generate a greater impact on your students?

1. Inclusiveness: All students can have a virtual robot and start practicing with it. The fact the robots are virtual and within a gamified, mission-based online learning environment, enables students to truly comprehend that mistakes are actually learning experiencesand not more than that. Having this concept clear, will increase both their self-esteem and their confidence.
2. Scalability: Students will begin programming with a blockly visual editor to then progress to a Python programming language. That will enable students with no prior knowledge on coding, and those who have programmed a lot in the past, to work and learn in the same online learning environment. Also, students can code and play with both the virtual version of the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 and with Ruby, CoderZ’s new playful and amazing robot.
3. Transferable skills: By learning with virtual robots, your students might be having a glimpse into the future: Did you know that engineers all over the world work with simulations environments before building their first prototype?. Well, even if your students don’t want to become engineers, it is great to give them tools that are transferable to the professional life they will have in the near future. The 21st century skills they’ll gain while programming their very own virtual robot are going to be exceptional and useful, regardless of the career path they decide for themselves.
4. Flexibility and scenarios that only work virtually: Enabling your students to learn how to program robots in a virtual learning environment will allow them to experiment situations they won’t face in real life (at least for now). The virtual environment is flexible and can introduce your student’s conditions existing inspacethat affect the design and operation of spacecraft, the law of gravity and more.

Do you know how Ruby or the EV3 respond when on the moon? Well, your students might be able to answer that after coding their virtual robots.

5. Tools for teachers: Not only students can benefit from learning STEM with virtual robots. Teachers, educators, STEM coordinators, and robotics experts can track the real progress of their students, how they are comprehending the different STEAM concepts, and how each individual participant of the class is evolving.

There is not much time to waste. You can start experiencing how it feels to teach STEM with virtual robots, and even remotely, today.

You and your students are going through a hard time, but education must go on. It is now the right time to teach them that there are -indeed- several ways to solve one same problem, and that class can be delivered in a different way.

It is time for STEM to be taught in a new way. It is time for CoderZ.

Contact us, and see the amazingly positive effect this gamified, online learning environment will have on your students and children. The time is now!