I’ve taught middle school for 6 years. This year I began the new adventure of teaching high school. The teacher before me retired and I inherited a ton of stuff but it was all pretty old. I couldn’t seem to figure out how I was going to use the stuff I had and I had to create a curriculum. Fortunately, I was given a decent budget, so I started to think about how I could build a supply of materials that would work for me. Enter VEX GO…
…but it’s for grade 3+ right?! Well, High School is part of that “+” and it checked off so many boxes for me (affordable, good storage, no software installs needed, works on chromebooks, durable, good support and great curriculum for free). I have two sections of Robotics 1 with about 30 kids in each class, so I ordered 2 large classroom sets (a total of 30 kits). This allows me to have one kit per two students.
This is a shelf dedicated to one of the two classes I use GO for.
My students LOVE this stuff. I think a major reason for them taking to it so quickly is that it was very quick and easy to get a “win”. I was able to hand the kits out and then direct the students to a site I setup (MJ STEM - GO Lessons) where they would see images of different mechanisms. They would build the mechanism and answer some questions all in one 45-minute class period (not something I have been able to do with metal hardware in the past).
That took care of my Robotics 1 classes and my Robotics 2 classes had enough v5 kits to make groups of four kids per kit. I was happy to be able to reserve the v5 equipment for the upperclass.
I really like that I can take students from VEXcode VR, to GO, to V5 and everything looks and feels the same.
Bottom line- VEX GO is great for my High School students!
Do you use GO for students that are older or younger than the targeted demographic? Please share how you have used it in your classrooms. Feel free to ask me questions about my experience with GO at the high school level.
