Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy

Use educational affordances of robotics to create CS-STEM opportunities for all learners

V5 Training Salamanca

September 10, 2019

VEX EDR V5 Workshop in Salamanca, NY

By Jesse Flot

This August, Salamanca City Central School District (https://www.salamancany.org/) and the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services (https://www.boces.org) hosted 2 days of focused robotics training for area teachers, many of whom are transitioning from the VEX EDR Cortex to VEX EDR V5 (https://www.vexrobotics.com/vexedr/v5) robots in their classrooms. Since many of the teachers had some prior experience with the older system, the training content was customized to focus on the VEX EDR V5 hardware enhancements, new programming language, and impact on robotics competitions. One of the lead professional development trainers from the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy was there to guide teachers as they built their first robots with the new system, successfully program those robots in the new VEXcode Text environment (https://www.vexrobotics.com/vexcode), and even run scrimmage-style competitions.

The teachers who went through the workshop are now more confident and prepared to run robotics classrooms and teams, even with the adoption of the new VEX EDR V5 system. To learn more about training opportunities through the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Academy, visit our training page: https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/Training/index.html

And if you are a teacher who is looking for resources to use with the VEX EDR V5 system, check out our brand new Mechanical Foundations Curriculum (https://www.cmu.edu/roboticsacademy/news/cmra-news-2019/vex-edr-v5.html), freely available through the CS-STEM Network (https://www.cs2n.org/, free login required).