The PD+ Community was a hive of activity this April! Posts detailing the 2024 VEX Educators Conference, IQ math curriculum ideas and fun solar eclipse activities were at the forefront. Read on to find out more!

Educators from around the world Learn, Grow, and Connect at the VEX Educators Conference

The third annual VEX Educators Conference took place alongside the VEX Robotics World Championship this April in Dallas, Texas. Over 200 educators convened for three days of insightful speakers, engaging hands-on workshops, and in-person 1-on-1 sessions amidst the excitement and energy of VEX Worlds. There were too many excellent professional learning opportunities to mention them all, but here are a few standouts. Look for recordings of all the speakers’ presentations in the PD+ Video Library in the coming weeks.

• Mr. Louie Lopez, Director of DoD STEM in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, and Dr. Rebecca Grella, Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, Placement DoD STEM, provided information on the extensive resources available to students, educators, and those interested in STEM careers. They described DoD sponsored grants, lesson plans and professional development opportunities available to K-12 educators. Watch the keynote here.

• Dr Maya Israel, Associate Professor of Educational Technology and CS Education, presented a hands-on VEX 123 Workshop in which she shared strategies for including students with disabilities in robotics using Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and High Leverage Practices (HLP).

• Hands-on Workshops for all VEX platforms, including Bringing Competition to Your Classroom, Science and Data Logging with Python for IQ, EXP, and V5, and Coding and Creativity with VEX GO.

• A guided tour of the VEX World Championship Pits, where educators spoke with students from teams representing countries from around the world.
• A networking happy hour for connecting with like-minded colleagues.
• Tickets to the VEX World Championship Finals in the Dome, where they watched the VEX VRC Middle School, JROTC and VEX U Teams compete for the top title, along with the always much anticipated 2024-25 Game Reveal!

We are already busy planning for next year’s conference, so if you missed the fun this year, don’t worry! Another opportunity will be rolling around before you know it.

Talking with Students at the VEX World Championships!

Did you ever wonder how VEX Robotics teams make it to Worlds? Check out this post and this post to read about the paths this year’s best and brightest VRC Teams navigated to make it to the VEX World Championships!

Solar Eclipse Activities

The VEX education team had a blast coming up with fun activities across the VEX Continuum to celebrate and explore the total solar eclipse that occurred on April 8th . Although this year’s eclipse is history, many of these activities can be easily incorporated into curricula about the sun and moon! 

Math Ideas Abound!

There were several inquiries for hands-on math activities for VEX IQ over the course of the month. A few of interest include:

• Writing equations to express the relationship between dependent and independent variables
• Determining the surface area of rectangular prisms
• Representing three-dimensional figures using nets made of rectangles and triangles. 

As always, these are just a few of the enlightening posts from the last month in the PD+ Community! 

Inspired by these posts? Have questions, suggestions, ideas or recommendations? Share them in the PD+ Community! Diverse perspectives make the PD+ Community stronger! And remember, 1-on-1 Sessions are available for PD+ All-Access Members at your convenience for you to discuss all things VEX. Sign up for a 1-on-1 Session here!