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Hi everybody,

Welcome back to the VEX Classroom. My name is Audra, and today we're gonna talk about unpacking your VEX 123 Classroom Bundle and getting ready to teach with your bundle in your classroom.

To start with, the VEX 123 Classroom Bundle was designed with teachers in mind. All of us on the education team have classroom experience. We tried to think about all of those moments where we wished we had one more thing or something a little bit different and put all of that into the Classroom Bundle so that you are set up to be successful with the bundle, whatever your setting.

So to begin with, we'll talk a little bit about what comes in your bundle and then the things that you should do to get ready to teach with your bundle in your setting. Our VEX 123 bundle comes in this fantastic storage bag. All of your bundle components will fit inside this bag so that it's easy to transport. If you are a traveling teacher who has to move around your building or from building to building, and if you live in a place like Pittsburgh, where it tends to rain or snow many, many days throughout the year, having a weatherproof storage bag will come in really handy. All of your things can go inside of here. You can take it with you in the car, throw it into your car, go to your next building, walk through the rain, and know that your robots are safe and sound inside.

Also, all of us elementary school teachers know the value of a good label. So, we've built in a space for you to be able to label your bundle with your name, your classroom, your role in school, whatever you so choose. This way, everybody knows which things belong to you so that if you lend out your 123 bundle, you can get it back and things stay together.

Now we're gonna open up our bundle bag and see all of the wonderful things that are inside of it. As we unzip our bundle bag, you will notice inside everything comes pre-organized, pre-sorted, organization is key. To begin with, we have boxes that hold your loose parts, like your robots. All six of your 123 robots that come in each bundle bag will be contained inside of a box. For the purposes of this video, this is a small Classroom Bundle. VEX recommends group sizes of two students per robot. So, you'll choose the Classroom Bundle that best meets your needs and fits the size of the group that you're working with.

We have all six of our robots in one locking latching storage box. If you hand this to a student and they drop it on the floor, your robots won't go anywhere because they're all locked inside. Next, we have a similar box that holds all of our coders. All of the coders are in here, and again, we have that same latching mechanism so that our coders stay secure inside of this box. All of our things have a very small footprint.

Next, you will find your coder cards, and the coder cards come in another fantastic storage box. Again, these are tiny small pieces. We don't want them to get lost, so having a nice secure box that latches and locks will come in really handy. You'll also notice that there are a lot of coder cards in here. They're not just the six sets that go with your robots and with your coders, but there's also a complete extra set of coder cards. In the event that a coder card gets lost or broken or needs to be cleaned, you can supplement and supply your students with extra coder cards when you need them. Because we know inevitably, especially working with small children, that is a situation that's going to happen. We're gonna need to have extra coder cards, and they're all there for you inside of their handy-dandy little storage box.

Next up, we have our VEX field tiles and field walls. Your field tiles and walls snap together.

Thank you for joining us today. We hope this overview helps you get started with your VEX 123 Classroom Bundle. Happy teaching!

And you can put these together in a lot of different ways. You can use one individual tile for students in a group or at a learning center. You can put all of the field tiles together. The walls are a great visual and tangible barrier. If you want to help reinforce that rule of not touching the robot while it is running, using the field is a great way to do that because it gives students the opportunity to see this is the robot space, this is my space. Don't cross over this wall while the robot is running.

The last thing in this bottom part of your bag is your VEX 123 classroom poster. This poster is the same one that you see here. This is a great way to ground your VEX 123 Learning Center or to have up in your classroom so that you have that shared visual with your students as you're talking about different things that you're going to do with your robot while you're teaching.

You'll also find things in the top part of this bag. I turned it around. You can see the top part of the bag has a mesh compartment so that you can see what's in there really quickly, but it also zips closed. This way, you can keep things safe and secure. In here, you'll find things like the art rings, your batteries for your coders, a USB charging hub, and a tiny little screwdriver for when you need to put the batteries into your coder, in case you don't have one of those in your classroom. Again, we tried to think about all of those things that we wish we had at our fingertips when we were teaching and put them into the bundle. There's extra room inside of here also. So, if you want to include things like art ring canvases, extra pencils, or anything else that you need to take with you as you're teaching and traveling, you have space now to do that.

So, now that we've seen the things that are inside of our bundle, what are the things that we need to do to get ready to teach with these materials in our classroom? To start with, the very first thing you're going to want to do is deal with the batteries. As I mentioned before, the 123 robots come in this awesome box. The reason this box is so awesome is not just because it locks and holds them all in there, but it charges all of your robots with one plug. You can sit all of your robots inside of their little homes, take these tiny little USBs, plug them in, and plug it in one time to one device or one outlet to charge all six of your robots. The 123 robots are a USB-C charge. So, if you have another device or another charger and you need to charge one robot at a time, you can do that. But this gives you the opportunity to charge all of them in one place with one plug. In my classroom, I had two outlets in my entire room. So, the value of being able to charge six things with one plug is definitely not lost on me. I know that I'm not the only teacher in that situation.

Now, that's the only thing in VEX 123 that will need to be charged. Your coders run on triple-A batteries. If we open one up and take off the battery compartment on the back of your coder, you'll see there's this little trap door with a tiny screw. That little screwdriver that I mentioned before is included in there for you to use, or you can use any Phillips screwdriver that you have. You just unscrew the back trap door. You'll see it start to lift up a little bit, open it up, and then you can take the batteries from your bundle and insert two triple-A batteries into the back compartment of your coder. Once you have your battery door open, you can insert two triple-A batteries into the little slot. You'll put the battery door back on top and screw it back in. Now your coder is up and ready to go. When you turn it on, you can press the button, and you'll see that little green light come on. That now tells you that your batteries are ready.

Thank you for your attention and for being a part of this learning journey. We hope these tools and tips will enhance your teaching experience and make your classroom a more engaging place for your students. Happy teaching!

Now, the last thing that you'd need to do to get ready to start teaching with VEX 123 is update the firmware on the coder and the robots. So, I'm gonna take out one of my robots. I have my coder on. I'm going to turn on my robot, slide it, and turn it on. Now that both of these are open and on, I can go to my Classroom App that I've downloaded on my device. This is something that you can put on just your teacher device. It does not need to be on any student devices. This is a teacher-facing tool.

Once I open up the Classroom App, I'll see the robots and coders that I have that are on. If they are red, it means that they need to be updated. Their firmware needs to be updated. I can update all robots and coders by just pressing that button. You can see how they are starting to update. It's gonna begin with the coder and then it will move to the 123 robot. You can do this for all of your robots at one time and for all of your coders.

As your devices are updating, you'll see the lights flash, so this way you know what's happening and which device is being connected to the Classroom App. As your firmware is updating, you'll see the bar across that device start to move across, and you'll want to make sure that you keep your Classroom App on and in close proximity to the robots and the coders that you are updating while this process is happening. Once you update them once, you shouldn't need to do that again for quite some time, and the update process is really pretty quick.

There we go. Now that our robot and coder are updated, the next thing that we can do, if you so choose, is to rename your robots. When your robots pop up in your Classroom App, they will all have the name of VEX 123, but you can select Rename. You can rename your robot, so this way you can keep track of who has what robot. You can name them something like robot one, robot two, robot three. This way, it gives you an extra tool to be able to manage all of your materials within your classroom. Because the only way to rename a robot is in the Classroom App, and the teacher is the only one with the Classroom App, we ensure that our robot names are never things that are inappropriate or things that we don't want students to be talking about or saying.

Once you have your batteries in your coders and your robots charged, you are ready to go and begin teaching with VEX 123. If you'd like to learn more about the components of your bundle and getting started, we have a great knowledge base article about that, which will walk you through again how to get organized and some tips and tricks that you might find for getting your field set up and for getting your materials organized. We'll remind you again how to install your batteries and get things charged.

You may want to dive right into teaching with STEM Labs, which you can find at education.vex.com, or take our educator certification course to learn more about how to use your 123 robots and coders and all of the great things that come in your bundle. We look forward to hearing more from you in the professional learning community and can't wait to see all of the wonderful things that you do with your Classroom Bundle in your classroom.

Thanks so much.

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