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Hello and welcome back. As you know, my name is Audra, and now that you've just created your very first VEX GO Build, we have our little J.O.S.H. build right here. We are going to talk about what to do after you've built something because inevitably we have to take it apart again.

Now, something that you'll notice about not only this build but other VEX GO Builds is that they are intentionally designed to be relatively simple and quick to put together once you are comfortable with your kit. The idea behind that is so that you and your students can build something, do something with it, and take it apart, all within a relatively short amount of time. So if you wanted to use your kits multiple times during the day, you are able to. Also, as your students get more comfortable building with the kit, they can build things quickly. This way, they know that they can take it apart and put it back together; it's not a big deal. The impetus to save something over a long period of time isn't as great because their confidence in being able to rebuild it easily is there.

So now let's talk about what happens after you have something built and now we want to take it apart. As you may have seen in the Get Ready, Get VEX GO storybook, there is a special tool in your kit called the Pin Tool, and I am going to switch now to our digital book to show you that page.

All right, so here we can see on page 10, we get introduced to the VEX Pin Tool. You can see here if we zoom in on these images, the Pin Tool looks a little bit like pliers. You hold it in your hands, and if you have a pin sticking out of a beam, you would hold it, line it up, and then put the end on top of the pin to pull the pin out with that tool. This is a special tool designed just for VEX plastic.

So we're going to go ahead together and find our Pin Tool now. Here I have my VEX GO kit that I just used to build J.O.S.H. You can see that some of the pieces are missing because they're in this build together. Over here, I have my VEX Pin Tool. If I pull this out, you can see when they're brand new, they have a rubber band on the ends to hold them together. But we are going to take that off, and you do not have to put this back on once you take your Pin Tool out of the case. When we put it back in the kit, the lid will close, and the lid will close the end. So that will be fine, and you don't need to keep that rubber band around.

Let's take a closer look at our VEX Pin Tool. Just like we saw in the book, it has an end here that fits over a pin, and we can squeeze these levers. If you look really carefully at yours, as you do that, you'll see that it comes together and opens and closes to create a smaller and larger opening to enable you to pull the pins out. On the back of the Pin Tool, there are also two different tools here. We have one that's a little pry bar that we can use to pry beams and plates apart, and then we have another one that looks like a little tiny pointy thing that we can use to push pins through a beam in a plate.

Now, this was a pretty simple build, and we don't need to use the Pin Tool, but as you will probably quickly find with your students, everyone loves to use the Pin Tool as much as possible. This is also the reason that not only is there one Pin Tool per kit, but if you have a classroom bundle, in your spare part bin there are extra Pin Tools. This way, if you have students working in groups or in pairs, each student can have a Pin Tool to use throughout their building or taking apart their build in class.

So let's get started. We are going to take apart our little J.O.S.H.

Thank you for joining me today. I hope you found this session helpful and that you and your students enjoy building and rebuilding with VEX GO. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out. Happy building!

Character here,

One piece at a time, and just like we snapped the pieces together, you can also take all of these pieces apart using just your hands. So we're gonna use a mixture just for the sake of learning about the Pin Tool. We're gonna use a mixture of our hands and the Pin Tool to take J.O.S.H. apart.

We're gonna start with the legs. To begin with, I'm just going to use my fingers. I'm going to pull this angle beam up and off, and that's it. As easy as that. We now have one piece that is ready to go back in our kit. And because of the organization in the kit, every piece has a home and everything has a place. So I can quickly see that, oh, this is where that piece lives and I can put it away. I'm going to do the same thing for the other leg on the other side and pull that one off as well, and now I can put both pieces together.

The idea behind all of this storage and organization is to make it quick and easy to take things apart so that we're not left with a jumble of pieces that you, the teacher, or the students, need to spend hours sorting back out. Everything has its place, it comes out of a place, it goes back to a place so the lids can close and kits can go away simply and easily.

All right, the next thing that we're going to do is use our Pin Pusher to push this pin out so this way we can take off the arms. So we're going to use that little pokey part at the end of our VEX Pin Tool, the Pin Pusher, we're going to line it up with the pin and we're just going to push. And there we go. The arms came off. So now that we have our arms separated, you can see, remember we said that the green pin has a long end and a short end. So now we can see here that this short end has a little edge to it so we can't push that through, but we can use that Pin Pusher to push the other side through as well.

So that's what we're going to do next. We're going to use this Pin Pusher to push that through. And now I can take off my first angle beam and I'm going to stick that in here. And now I can use the pin puller to pull the green pin the rest of the way out. You could also use your fingers, but in order to learn how to use the Pin Tool, we're going to slide the Pin Tool onto the end of the green pin, squeeze it together, whoop, squeeze it together, and pull. And there we go. Our green pin is separated from our yellow angle beam. So we're gonna put the yellow angle beam back and then we're going to put our green pin back into the jewel case to keep all of our pins together.

Again, be careful when you first open these jewel cases. Sometimes they are a little tight and you might have some things fall out of them, but that's okay. We can just put them back together. Just like all of the other pieces have pictures underneath them, the jewel case area does as well. There are images of the pieces that are inside of each jewel case underneath, so that way you can make sure that you have all of your components together. And underneath this one, you'll even see a picture of Colonel Joe. So if you wanna put Colonel Joe into your kit, it would go inside that jewel case right there.

So let's get back to taking apart J.O.S.H. The next thing we're going to do is take off the head and we're going to use the pry part of our Pin Tool. So we're gonna line up the end in between the pulley and the connector and just push it in there, and move it around and it will pry it up so that way we can take off the pulley, put that back into our kit. Again, that goes up at the top over here and now we're left with just three connectors together and I'm just gonna use my fingers to pull them apart. So I can take off one green connector, a second green connector, put it back in my kit, and then I can put my orange connector back over here.

Now I can take my Pin Tool, put my Pin Tool back in, and when I close the lids on my kit boxes, I can very, very, very easily see that I have all of the pieces that belong inside of my kit, right?

So the idea here is that if students are coming to put their kits away after they've created a build, you can look at them and in about seven seconds be able to tell them which pieces are missing if there are any missing, right? We can look quickly and easily through the clear lens to see, oh, we have everything. Okay, go put that back on the shelf.

So now congratulations, you've completed Chapter One. You've built your very first build. You've gotten to figure out a little bit about how VEX GO pieces come together. We've taken them apart, we've learned about where they go in our kit, and we've learned about the Pin Tool.

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I hope that this is a great introduction and I can't wait to see you in the next chapter where we will start building from build instructions.