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Hi, I'm Jason McKenna, welcome back to the VEX Classroom, where today we're gonna talk about using VEXcode VR activities. We're so proud of the millions of kids all over the world using VEXcode VR every single day. We created these activities for a really simple way for you to implement VEXcode VR teaching and learning in your classroom, your afterschool club, at home, no matter where you're trying to teach with VEXcode VR, these activities are a real simple and easy way for you to be able to implement teaching and learning of computer science.

Let's go ahead and take a look at how we can actually access them first, then we'll talk about ways that you can use them. So you can see here, I have VR launched, simply at vr.vex.com. In the upper part of the toolbar, there's this Learn icon here. If I select that, it's gonna take me to my computer science course, which is at cs.vex.com. So you can go directly there also, but up here, you see I have this link to activities and resources. I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna select that. And if I scroll down, you can see we have all of the VEXcode VR activities right here, and we have a lot of activities. This is gonna kind of continue to scroll through them right here. You can see, we have many different activities you can choose from. This will keep students busy for a really long period of time.

Now, because we have so many of them, we have different filters that you can utilize. So if I want to do very basic ones, just on basic movement, I can select the filter, and I get that there. Now, if I want to do basic movement ones, but I want to use the art canvas playground only 'cause I wanna use the robot pen, I can have my kids draw a house. So you could see the filter works very well there. I just uncheck them to get back to my normal view here. But very easy to be able to filter through the activities based upon what is it you're looking at doing.

So let me go, and I'm gonna select this Coordinate Numbers one, and you'll notice all of our activities are a Google doc, and that's on purpose. That allows you to be able to update these activities and essentially make them your own. Now, we have a STEM Library article, which is gonna be linked below, that actually shows you how you can update and utilize this and customize the activities to make them your own. But you can see here, they're very simple one or two page activities, which makes it very simple and easy for you to implement them into your classroom, afterschool club, whatever your particular educational setting may be. This makes it very easy for you to implement these simple little one-page activities that you see right here.

So, let me go and just choose an advanced one, just to kind of show it off. Let me see here. Encoded Message is one of our newer playgrounds here. So you can see here, we have different levels to the challenge. Level one, level two, level three, level four. You can see we're at Python only. So if you want to really do some advanced coding with the students, there's a couple of helpful hints. But this is one of our more advanced activities, you can see right here. And we can see the description for each level here, but no matter where your students are at in computer science, we have an activity that's kind of catered to their particular level here.

So of course, content is not the only thing that you need in order to be able to successfully implement these types of things. What other support material do we have for you out there also? Well, if I select the teacher's portal here. If I scroll down, you can see all of these different activity resources right here. So first of all, Pacing Guide and Standards Mapping. If I select that, and then I select the United States, here I have the actual standards alignment for the VR activities right here.

Thank you for joining us today. We hope you find these resources helpful in your teaching journey. Keep exploring and happy coding!

So I have an activity, a category, a description, the programming concepts, and then the standards that actually hit it there. So I'm able to actually teach standards with these activities. Of course, that's very important to be able to do that.

Now, if I go to the actual Pacing Guide up here, I could see in the computer science course, if I select that, that's that Pacing Guide. I can see how I can use the activities, if I select the second tab here, with the actual course itself. So if I'm looking to supplement the CS course with the activities, it makes it very easy for me to do that with the Pacing Guide that I have right here.

Of course, the number one question I get from teachers all the time, anytime it comes time for them to do the activities, is the answers. We have all the answers located for you right here.

And then finally, the Email Home. If you want to inform parents or stakeholders of what they're actually doing with VEXcode VR and what they're actually doing with the activities, this is a great email. Again, it's a Google doc, so you can customize it and make it your own. This is a great email that you could send to them to be able to do it.

Lastly, the last thing that we have, if I go back to the activities themselves, you can see there's a link to our STEM Library right here, and it takes me right to VEXcode VR. I can select the Educator Resources, more information about using rubrics with the course. All different types of things that you can see, the customizing one, all different types of things that we can utilize with using the activities in the classroom. All those articles are listed there.

So, we don't just give you content, we provide you with some pacing guides. We provide you with the answers to them. You can customize it and make it your own. Lots of things that you can do with these activities to really have a lot of fun with the teaching and learning of computer science in your educational setting.

So, if you do have further questions about activities, please go to our community, ask those questions. If you have a fantastic idea for an activity, add it to our lessons. You can go and create your own activity and add it here, right in VEX PD+. We would love to see what you come up with and what you're doing with your students in your classroom.

But again, if you have questions, comments, whatever those things are, go in our community and ask those. And we'd love to talk to you about using VEXcode VR activities in your educational setting. So I look forward to chatting with you there and look forward to seeing you in our next video.

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