Welcome to the thread for the “Bring STEM to Life” Live Session! Here, you have the opportunity to discuss with VEX Experts and educators from around the world about incorporating STEM into your core curriculum while also infusing concepts like Social and Emotional Learning . You can also ask questions and provide suggestions for what you would like to see discussed during each session in this series. We’re so excited to learn with you! 
2 Likes
How do I register for this?
2 Likes
@Jessica_Drayer You can register for any of the Live Sessions by going to the Live Sessions page from your PD+ Dashboard, and selecting ‘Enroll in Series’. Can’t wait to see you there!
2 Likes
Just registered for a bunch of them!!
4 Likes
@Jessica_Drayer If there is anything you are particularly interested in learning more about, please share any questions or ideas in this thread. We can use all of that info as we shape session content
1 Like
I am so looking forward to this Live Session! @Kelsey_Zhang, @Rebecca_Goss, @Seth_Ogoe_Ayim, @Jessica_Drayer and @Desiree_White-Price – If there are any topics, questions, or ideas you’d like to see covered during the Series - this Community thread is the place to share them
1 Like
@Audra_Selkowitz I am just looking for more ideas to incorporate VEX. I want to create more lessons moving forward that engages students and could be cross-curricular.
2 Likes
I’m so looking forward to our first session on April 20th! @Desiree_White-Price I think you’ll be excited with the projects in store for our first evening
We’re going to learn about how to build engaging, cross-curricular projects centered around STEM/CS activities - with a theme of ‘Robot Olympic Day’! There are many Olympic Day or Field Day type activities in the Spring, so now we can build something around that idea.
Audra Selkowitz,
I’m wanting to sign up for some live sessions. I went to PD+ Dashboard but I don’t see the Enroll in Series tab. I’m interested in a couple of things. #1 some ideas for summer camp. I’m thinking of using a speedbot for soccer. #2 more curriculum ideas for teaching.
Thank you,
David
Hi @David_Wettrich! You can sign up for Live Sessions from this link
We can absolutely help with the points you listed. I’m going to tag @Alaina_Caulkett here about camps, as she is our camp queen! I would recommend the two sessions:
- Bring STEM to Life
- Thinking Outside the Classroom (this one focuses more on camps with Alaina)
There are two buttons on the page I linked above, the Enroll in Series and the Community Discussion. We are already chatting in the thread for the Bring STEM to Life community discussion, which is great! I think you checking out the thread for Thinking Outside the Classroom would be great too, to see what Alaina has already done with camps.
If you have any other specific questions about curriculum ideas, we would be more than happy to help you with those too
Hi Lauren,
I’m still not able to register for the live classes that you suggested. It’s not letting me register. I must be doing something wrong.
David
Hi @David_Wettrich! We will figure this out together can you post a screenshot of what you see or what happens when you select Enroll in Series? Thank you!
Hi everyone! Thank you to all those who attended the Session last night! If you couldn’t make it, the recording will be added to the PD+ Video Library shortly. In the meantime, here is the link to the slides from the session that summarize the projects that were shared.
And the links to the printables that I used in the session as well
- Touch button project printable
-
Touch and motion planning printable
(As a reminder, all the available printables for all things VEX are at printables.vex.com.)
At the close of the session, Swetha asked a great question about ways to connect the Robot Olympics to VEXcode VR. That is a great idea, and I wanted to offer some ideas here for ways to take what was shared with physical robots and implement it with VR.
Doing a ‘Triathlon’ in VR - for this, I would use 3 different playgrounds, and have teams compete for the ‘total time’ of all three components. Depending on the level of your students you could choose activities for each ‘leg’ of the triathlon. Here are some ideas:
-
For the ‘marathon’ portion: Instead of driving your robot around a cube, you could drive it in Basketball Drills (for beginners), or Letter Maze or Navigate the Maze for ‘leveling up’.
-
For the ‘swimming’ portion: Instead of moving a physical disk, you can move disks in VR with Disk Mover or Castle Color Match
-
For the ‘bike race’ portion: Instead of driving through slaloms with a real robot, you could use the Ski-bot Activity to code the VR Robot to drive through a slalom course!
Doing ‘synchronized swimming’ in VR - For this, I would get creative You can’t have 2 VR robots on the same Field in the same screen, but you could try to have 2 robots running projects on devices that are viewed side by side. You could use the Art Canvas + playground and upload a background image of a pool also, to give the illusion of ‘swimming’ as well
You could also have a combination of physical and virtual robot events in your Olympics! As well as physical student events based on the robot events. For instance, have your students also perform the Disk Mover challenge in the gym, or on the playground. Or set up a maze that they have to navigate through. (You could have them ‘code’ their partner, by putting the ‘driver’ outside the maze, and the ‘robot’ blindfolded in the maze - the driver has to get the robot through the maze without touching them.)
Just a few ideas to get the conversation started! There are SO many ways to extend this project
Hi David! I can see based on the message above the Community Discussion button that you do not have an All Access PD+ License and you probably have the Coaches PD+ License. There are some parts of PD+ that are only available to All Access License holders.
That being said, there are some Live Sessions that will be available to Coaches, including Engineering 101 and Thinking Outside the Classroom! These sessions have a VRC and/or VIQC tag.
We are going to update the session page to make this clearer, in the meantime, here are the Zoom links for each Live Session if you’d like to attend.
I apologize for the confusion and thank you so much for asking questions so we could figure this out together
Lauren,
Thank you for helping me out and thank you for the zoom links.
David
1 Like
Hi all, in case you weren’t able to attend the session last week, live - you can watch the recording in the PD+ Video Library.
Here is the link to this video
I look forward to our next session together! Please feel free to share any session ideas or questions in this thread!
Hi all, I’m so looking forward to our next Bring STEM to Life Live Session coming up on Thursday, May 18th at 6:30pm US Eastern Time. During this session we’ll look again at creating integrated STEM projects, but this time through the lens of literacy. I’ll share some project ideas for 123, GO, and IQ that blend literacy and robotics in unique and interesting ways.
You can enroll in the Bring STEM to Life Live Session series [here]. (VEX Professional Development Plus) And, as always, the recording of the session will be added to the PD+ Video Library also so you can watch it anytime.
I look forward to seeing you in the session! And if you have any other ideas for Live Session topics or questions, please post them in this thread
