Lesson 4: Teacher Tools in VEXcode VR

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Hello and welcome back. My name is Audra, and in this video, we are going to talk a bit about some of the teacher tools that you have access to with your VEXcode VR Enhanced or Premium license. These tools can help you get and stay organized while you're teaching with VEXcode VR.

We're going to discuss things like setting up sharing preferences to help you organize student projects, as well as the offline builds that you have access to. These features give you added flexibility in how, when, and where you're able to work with VEXcode VR. Everything that we're going to talk about in this video will have links provided down below. There will be links to articles that will walk you through the step-by-step process of setting up all of these features, so you have access to them at any time if you need to revisit any of the topics we're discussing.

If you're unfamiliar with vradmin.vex.com, where we'll be using a bunch of different features, these articles are really helpful for you to access and help you get set up at any point in time. As we've mentioned before about VEXcode VR, everything within VR, including all of this sharing and the offline builds, is COPA and FERPA compliant. Even when students are sharing projects with you, VEX does not see or have access to any of those projects. They go directly from the students to you, based on how you have set up your sharing preferences, so you don't have to worry about student privacy issues at all.

The hub of these teacher tools that we're going to be talking about and working with today is right here at vradmin.vex.com. Let's jump over to the computer, and I'll talk you through how to log into VR Admin, as well as what you can expect once you get there.

So here I am at vradmin.vex.com, and we can simply log into VR Admin with our existing VEX log-in information. The same email and password that you use for your VR license is the same information that you will use right here. You'll log into your account, and then you will be taken to your VR Admin Dashboard. Once you're logged in, here we are within vradmin.vex.com. On your home screen, you'll see your profile information, as well as have access to some VEXcode VR resources and a direct link into PD+.

To begin with, I mentioned we were going to talk about sharing preferences, so let's jump over to this sharing section. In a previous video, you learned that you could make multiple classes. You can set up project sharing preferences for each of those classes. To do that, you can connect either your Google Drive or your Dropbox to your VR license so that student projects go directly into your Google Drive or Dropbox, whichever one you have configured.

Connecting is very simple. You're simply going to sign in with your Google Drive and follow the prompts to sign in with your Google information for the account that you want to connect. The same process applies to Dropbox. You would just follow the prompts to log into Dropbox to connect that account to VEXcode VR. Once you've followed those steps and logged in, you will see an authorized message indicating that Dropbox is connected to your sharing preferences. You can connect one or the other, or both, or neither, whichever works best for you.

Here, I've connected my Dropbox, and now I'm going to show you how to set that sharing preference within your classes. When I go back to my classes, you can see I've already set this up for one of my classes where it says Delivery Method Dropbox. Now, I'm going to show you how we can do this for another class.

Thank you for watching this video. I hope you found it helpful in understanding how to use the teacher tools available with your VEXcode VR license. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please feel free to reach out.

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So without any sharing preferences set up, the default delivery method will be local download, which means that students will download their projects directly to their devices. They can then share them with you however you need to, in an LMS or something like that.

But, if we go up to this little pencil, in order to change this preference, I can select Dropbox now because I have that configured, so that will show up. I'll see the upload path that is there for. And when I select save changes, now I can see that my delivery method is here.

As I mentioned before, if at any point in time you need a little refresher on how to set up these sharing preferences, the article link down below called "Sharing Files in VEXcode VR Enhanced or Premium," gives you a step-by-step guide that will again, walk you through this process to make it nice and simple for you.

So now, let's take a look at what we get when our students share their projects with you, so that way you know what to expect.

So now, here we are back in VEXcode VR. I've got my students' project here for navigating the wall maze using multiple sensors. They've named their project. I can see here they're assigned to this class code, so this way I know that this is the class that I'm going to be looking for.

When students select the share button, they will then enter their name, the assignment, and any notes, right? We talked about how that notes feature can factor into your ability to assess student work when they share it with you, but we also want to make sure that students always enter their name and the assignment because that's how your projects are going to appear in your Dropbox or your Google Drive. They will be sorted based on the name and the assignment. So that's really important information.

Then students can enter any notes here as we mentioned before. Now down below, you'll see that I have some options. I can still locally download this to my device. So if students want to download a project to put it on a USB drive and take it home to be able to work on it on another computer, they can totally do that, or they can share it directly with you. And when they select that share button, that project will get shared with you and sorted to that sharing preference that you've set up.

So now we get this little success prompt. We know as a student, "Okay, my teacher has my project."

So what do you have? All right, so here I am in my Dropbox and you can see again, that my project is here. It's sorted by name and assignment and I have not one but two files that are sent to me when students share a project. We get that PDF file that we talked about previously and all of the great information that that shows, including the ending spot of our robot on the playground. In addition, we also get the actual VR blocks file, so we get that project file that we can run in VEXcode VR.

Now, in order to open that file, you need to actually open the file directly in VR, in the load from my device option there. You can't open that from Dropbox. You'll have to open that in VEXcode VR.

So now you can see, I'm sure, how this can help you, right? As students are sending you projects, they're not just coming into your email in a bunch of different places. You have all of your projects sorted by class, sorted by name, by assignment, to make it much, much simpler for you to keep track of student work as you're teaching.

So another feature that again, makes teaching with VR a bit easier for you is the access that you have to the offline builds of VEXcode VR.

So let's go back into vradmin.vex.com and we'll talk a bit about those.

Here I am in the offline section of vradmin.vex.com and you can see here that you have direct downloads for Windows or for Mac to offline builds of VEXcode VR.

Now, you'll see the minimum system requirements here so that you know what kinds of device you need in order to run these offline builds. But once you download these builds to your device or your student's devices, it means that you have the ability to work with VEXcode VR with or without internet access.

You can download using either the Windows or the Mac, download whichever one best meets your needs. And then once that is downloaded, students will log into the offline build using the same class code that they would use for the web-based version. So whichever class code they have or you use, that's what you will use in order to log into your offline VEXcode VR.

Upon the initial download, you will need internet connection, and then you'll also need internet connection once every 30 days in order to validate and verify that licensing information. So why is this helpful? Well, we know that depending on where we go or where our students go, access to internet is not always reliable or consistent.

Having access to the offline version of VEXcode VR gives you so much more added flexibility for where and how and when you work with VEXcode VR. You can download this to students' devices, and even if they don't have internet access at home, they can still work in VEXcode VR on that device in their house using the offline build.

For you as a teacher, it means that you can look at students' projects, you can continue lesson planning anywhere you want, regardless of whether or not you have internet access. It just adds to that level of flexibility that you have in order to be able to work with VEXcode VR in a variety of situations.

As I mentioned before, one of the articles that is linked down below is an article called, "Using Offline VEXcode VR." That again, can help you walk through these steps in order to get access to the offline builds of VEXcode VR.

If you have any questions about anything that we've talked about here, you can absolutely post them in the PD+ Community. Or if you'd like to have one of us walk you through getting everything set up and organized for you or your students, we would be happy to do that in a one-on-one session.

I hope that you found this video helpful and I look forward to hearing about how you are using these fantastic teacher tools in the PD+ Community.

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