![]() Lego Education has been involved with other groups, including Intel, CDW-G and First Book, in giving Title 1 schools laptops, internet connections and yes, kits through a Creative Learning Connections grant initiated just in August - and 45 school districts were earmarked to get the grant. Through the Spike Prime app, students can see the code behind the lessons and projects they undertake Lego Education Today, that digital divide, with some students able to access their remote learning needs easily, and others lacking not only Wi-Fi but even the device to get online, is more pronounced. Plus, there's the necessary internet connection as well. Each person raising and lowering the ring will create a different set of data points, and have a different experience, and can even amend a designed lesson on their own through the transparent code.īut this discovery comes at a price, not just the $330 for the kit, but the requisite computer or tablet needed to completely connect to these lesson plans. While there are specifically designed structures, like a Yoga Ring, the kits connect to open-ended discovery. The new Spike Prime kits, which come from Lego Education, tap into this idea. Lego Education, which launched in the 1980s, is more aligned with early Lego sets, those that included just trays of bricks, hinges, wheels and such that allowed people to build what came to their mind. While you can purchase bricks on their own, people tend to buy the kits that promise to create a fire station, or Hogwarts from Harry Potter. Lego is a brand most families know today through their kits and even retail stores. Each lesson has a video component, and starts with supporting a student through the beginning, but then takes this scaffolding away, forcing children to handle more on their own. Also helpful are the lists of other unit plans available, all aimed at grades 6 to 8, that focus on design, engineering and coding. These data points are also handy, Nash notes, because they can be reused, ready made to be filled into math word problems, for example. There's also a way to see the code so children can see how the Yoga Ring is - and the instructions - are written and designed. I don't succeed nearly as well as my younger counterparts who are able to raise and lower their Yoga Ring and watch the resulting graph build from data points on the screen to show whether they're holding the pose correctly or not. The lessons can be done in person, or asynchronously, meaning students at home can do these, as long as they have the Spike Prime kits and access to the site. It's one of several new Spike Prime science and math lessons, a new unit called Training Trackers, that are designed to blend robotics with projects that get kids moving during a time when children are spending even more time seated on screens. I join a call with two other students, literally middle school students, their parents and a middle school science teacher Jennifer Nash, who walk us through how to make our Yoga Rings work through a unit plan called Stretch With Data. That update takes about 15 minutes.īut the instructions are clear, and my Yoga Ring is ready for my upcoming lesson.įor one lesson, students are asked to build a device called a Yoga Ring, which tracks their movements through the Spike Prime app GearBrain I pick the Mac, and then need to update my Spike Prime hub to make sure it's running the latest version of the app. While you can build anything you want, to see the full experience, and see how your devices make use of the system, you're going to need to download the Spike Prime App to a Windows PC, Chromebook, Mac, iPad and Android tablet. (Both of which I own, and have assembled in my home.) Instead this is a bin of possibilities - anything can be built, which is the very best part of Lego's promise. This is a bin of parts, from wheels to multi-colored bricks, without any instruction manual on how to turn these parts into the Apollo Saturn V rocket, for example, or a Volkswagen Camper Van. Lego Education's Spike Prime looks very much the Lego kits I remember as a child. The Spike Prime kit includes hundreds of bricks, wheels, and other parts for open-ended play GearBrain Lego Education sent us one of the Spike Prime kits to play with - and held our hand as we built a connected design - and here's our experience. One of the latest is Spike Prime, which launched in January 2020, a kit that links Lego bricks to sensors, motors and coding, and wraps them all into lesson plans designed specifically for middle schoolers. Lego is a brand known for its building kits, with Lego Education coming in to add a learning layer to these iconic bricks.
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