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Getting Started with Your VEX GO Bundle

Watch this video to be guided through the unboxing of your GO Classroom Bundle, and learn strategies to get ready to use VEX GO with your students.

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Hi everyone. Welcome back to the VEX classroom. My name is Audra, and I'm here today to talk to you about VEX GO classroom bundles and getting started with your bundle in your classroom. VEX GO classroom bundles were designed with educators, for educators, to support you in any variety of learning environments that you may be working in.

So what is inside of a bundle? To start, VEX GO recommends two children per kit as a ratio for using VEX GO with students. This means that the size of the bundle that you order will vary depending on the size of the group that you're working with. For more information about VEX GO bundles and what is included in each, you can visit go.vex.com. For the purposes of this video, we'll be showing a small classroom bundle.

To begin, all classroom bundles come with kits with storage, which means that when you pull it out of the box, it is presorted and comes looking exactly like this. No more organizing on your own or dealing with pieces in plastic bags. All of your kits are ready to go and can be grabbed by students at a moment's notice to begin working. All of the kits and components of your classroom bundle fit inside of these carrying cases as well. This means that if you are a teacher who moves from classroom to classroom, or even building to building, perhaps out in rain or snow, as we often do here in Pittsburgh, all of your VEX GO materials can be put into these bags, grabbed with your two hands. They are weatherproofed and ready to go. The front of the bags also contains a nameplate space where you can slide a piece of paper in there with your name, so this way everyone knows which VEX GO kit is yours.

In addition to your kits with storage, you also receive a set of VEX GO field tiles and walls, which means that you can create a virtual robot playground for your robot to run in any environment, in any space, in any classroom. The field tiles snap together easily and can create a variety of robot playgrounds for your students to test their robots on. The VEX GO classroom bundle also comes with a set of VEX GO field tile walls, which snap onto the outside perimeter of your VEX GO field and can be used in a variety of ways, like with your eye sensor to detect an object and make your robot perform an activity, or just to define the space that is the robot's test space from the student's test base. When you take your VEX GO field apart, all of the pieces and components fit inside of this storage bag. So your entire classroom bundle fits in these two bags and can be stored or carried very easily.

In addition, your classroom bundle comes with a set of extra spare parts and extra pin tools. We know that the classroom bundle storage system makes it easy to see which pieces might be missing at any moment, but the extra parts kit works with that. So when you notice a piece is missing, you can go to the extra parts kit and replace it right away. Also, we worked with educators who said, if students are going to be working in groups and they have this really great pin tool, everyone is going to want to use it. So your classroom bundle comes with extra pin tools so that all students can use a pin tool every time they use VEX GO.

In addition to these items, your classroom bundle also comes with a charging hub. I know in my classroom outlet space was at a premium, so being able to charge all five batteries with one plug is critical. You can charge five batteries with either a plug or a USB, which means that all of your batteries can charge in one small contained space. And last but not least, your classroom bundle also comes with a VEX GO classroom poster.

So now that we know what's in our kits, how do we get started? VEX GO made it easy. There are just a few simple things to do to get ready to use VEX GO with your students, starting with charging your batteries.

So you'll wanna take the batteries out of each VEX GO kit and plug them into your charging hub, where they can all charge together. The nice thing about the charging hub is that all of my batteries fit in the palm of my hand. VEX GO uses a USB-C charger. So if your hub is not available, you can use any other charger that also uses a USB-C to charge your batteries.

After you've charged your batteries, the next step is to get the VEX GO Classroom App. The classroom app is designed for teachers to streamline some of the behind-the-scenes things that no one wants to take class time to do, like updating the brains firmware. You'll need to put the VEX GO Classroom App on a teacher-used device. It could even be your phone. Once you have the VEX GO Classroom App, you will be able to update the firmware and rename your brains to get ready to use VEX GO with your students.

Once you have the classroom app on your device, you'll need to hook up your brain to a VEX GO battery. So the batteries that we charged earlier will plug right into the brain and turn the brain on. The green light will come on, and you know that you're ready to work. In the VEX GO Classroom App, when you open it, the app will immediately begin to look for VEX GO brains that are nearby. If there are multiple, it will find multiple and pull them up on the screen as you can see here.

You can update the firmware for your VEX GO brains directly from the app regardless of what devices your students happen to be using. If a brain needs to be updated, it will appear in red in the classroom app. You can select update all devices to update all of the brains at one time. While your brain is updating, the light on the top power button will flash red and green, and the progress bar in the app will move forward. Now we can see that the brain is green in the app, which means that its firmware is updated.

Another thing that you can do in the app is to rename the brains. This is the only place where renaming is possible so that students can rename the brains anything that they feel like. In order to rename it, you will select the brain that you want to rename, select rename, and then enter a new name. This brain belongs to kit one, so I'm going to label it kit one. Renaming the brain will help students be able to find the brain that is associated with their robot quickly and easily when it is time to connect them to their device.

Speaking of labeling, you may want to also label things like your kits so that the boxes stay together or label the brains to match the kit that they go with. This way, students have a constant visual reminder of all of the materials that go together. As we all know, labeling things for students in elementary school helps things to move more smoothly.

All the information we talked about here and some more details can be found in the "Get Started with Your VEX GO Classroom Bundle" knowledge base article, which can be found at the site below. Now you are ready to use VEX GO with your students. From here, there are different pathways that you can take. Perhaps you're ready to jump right into teaching STEM labs with your students. We suggest that you visit the VEX GO knowledge base and read the "Implementing VEX GO STEM Lab" knowledge base article for a quick and easy overview of how STEM labs are organized and how to present that information to your students.

If you wanna know more about the VEX GO platform and all of its components, you can take the VEX GO certification course, which can be found at certifications.vex.com. You may also wanna think about how to set these materials up in your classroom and use the VEX GO field tiles and walls to build a learning center. Any of these paths are the right paths if they're the right path for you.

We are so excited to see what everyone learns with VEX GO, and we can't wait to see what you do with your students.

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