Class is not boring Sphero smart ball can teach children to learn programming

Orbotix now has a reputation as a world-renowned Sphero smart toy, and this ball-type remote control toy came to us as early as 2010. That is, we are not familiar with the concept of "networking". Now, four years after Sphero's debut at CES, Sphero has become one of the world's most popular peripheral products and supports both iOS and Android devices. Although most people initially regard Sphero as a kind of toy for adults or children, the recently rounded guy has begun to move into the field of education. In order to better publicize the Sphero,orbotix company launched a campaign called SPRK about 5 months ago. The goal of the campaign is to get schools to incorporate Sphero into their daily teaching programs, and children can learn to program not only through Sphero, but also in a very interesting process.

The SPRK program is the abbreviation of Schools Parents Kids, which is school, parent, robot and child, and is divided into two main parts: core and stem. Core contains a series of courses designed to help children build their own coding skills through visual and textual methods. Another stem is the next step, providing many different kinds of challenges for students who have mastered the core, allowing them to experiment with Sphero smart balls. To help students, Sphero offers two programming applications that support both iOS and Android devices. Although Orbbasic is a more advanced, text-based language tool, MacroLab can still use visual effects to let children begin the learning process. Through the use of MacroLab and orbbasic, for example, students can customize the Sphero ball based on a number of custom commands to act on and so on.

Of course, the SPRK program is not just for children, but parents and teachers play an important role in this project. "Even if a robot doesn't know anything about it, any teacher can teach the kids a lesson quickly," he said. Sphero's community manager, Ross Ingram, told Engadget in an interview. "The teacher prepares lessons very easily, and can immediately meet the needs of children, they can immediately see their progress." ”

Although the Sphero program is aimed only at pupils in the three or four and five grades, the Sphero plan can be extended to high school or even university scope in the future. As Ingram said: "Sphero can also continue to grow, in the future will provide iOS, Python, Ruby and other SDK development kits, so Sphero can provide the teaching content can become more and more complex with the child's growth." ”

At present, more than 250 schools in the United States and around the world have integrated Sphero into their syllabus. One of the reasons many schools have decided to start using Sphero is to save more money than to buy Sphero on the market alone. The company says the Sphero of a school is sold at a cost price. "Our prices for schools are much lower than the retail price of 80 to 130 dollars (about 490 to 800 yuan)." We can make a profit by retail, but the SPRK program can better publicize our products. Adam Wilson, founder and chief software architect of Sphero, explained. "As a robotics company, we can create a lot of new programs to integrate into the education business." We are very willing to teach our children new knowledge through Sphero, although this is not our main line. ”

The Sphero team said that although the company did not have any plans to incorporate robots into specialized educational tools, it has paved the way for many parents to educate their children, bringing greater convenience. In essence, adults are beginning to think that using Sphero's interesting attributes as a training tool for robotics and programming is a good idea. The SPRK program is only just beginning, and the future Sphero will grow and develop and be fully integrated into the world's education field.

"It was a rather fortunate ' accident ' that we wanted to continue to make a difference. Wilson said.