Revolutionizing Play: Sphero Indi Cars Ignite Creative Learning

Purpose & objective

After attending the session, participants will be able to:
*Use the Sphero Indi Race Cars
*Engage in the Indi puzzle pathway experience from the student perspective
*Plan and build their own pathways
*Create multiple examples of the various activities based on their specific content

Educational Challenges:
*Students must have access to the Sphero Indi Race Cars to successfully interact with Pathway Challenges. However, the templates may be completed as unplugged coloring puzzle activities in the case that the robots are unavailable.
*Students must have adequate floor space to construct their paths and run their robots.
*Constructing the various content-aligned pathways requires a significant time investment. To assist with this challenge, we have created a collection of templates and pre-made paths to jumpstart the creation process.

Technology Intervention:
*Sphero Indi Race Cars are educational screenless coding robots. They may be used with the Sphero Edu app, but that will not be required for this session. Both the use of the robots and the creation of the pathways using Google Slides will be fully explained during the session.

Models Employed:
*This session is designed for self-paced learning. All of the various components are introduced throughout the session. Paper-based templates for brainstorming will be available during the session. Participants will receive digital access to a Google Drive folder with a library of templates and pre-made activities for use after attending the session.

Lesson Plans or Instructional Activities/Strategies Employed:
*Blank Google Slides templates for planning and design
*Pre-made Google Slides templates in 2 designs (boxes along a path and linear boxes associated with multiple choice questions)
*Student Group Role Assignment Sheet to assign specific jobs for each member of the group when working in groups of more than three students
*Recording Sheets for students to track their Challenge answers and submit after the conclusion of the lesson (may be used for formative assessment purposes)
*16 Sphero Indi Race Car Robots with color-coded tiles

Evidence of Success: Over the past three years, we have conducted dozens of learning experiences using the Sphero Indi Race Car Robots. When used as a review before standardized testing, the students scored significantly higher on the standards covered by the Challenges in the various Indi pathways than on other standards that were not covered. With regards to behavior management, we observed student engagement and collaboration were evident even in the liveliest classroom environments.

Outline

*Introduction and Objectives
*Participants will receive a basic introduction to the use of the Sphero Indi Race Cars. (5 minutes - Direct Instruction)
*Participants will receive hard copy samples of the 2 types of pathway templates being presented with an explanation for each. (10 minutes - Direct Instruction)
*Participants will receive access to the Drive folder containing the blank templates for editing and a collection of pre-made Indi pathway lessons in both styles presented in the session via a QR code. (5 minutes - Guided Practice)
*Participants will brainstorm ideas for questions focusing on one content standard. (Questions must have actual answers, not theory or open-ended responses.) (5 minutes - Independent Practice)
*Participants will design their own pathway(s) using either blank paper templates or the editable digital templates provided. (15 minutes - Independent Creation)
*Participants will build and test their created pathways (10 minutes - Independent Synthesis)
*Q&A Session and Closure (10 minutes)

Supporting research

In 2021, Time Magazine recognized the Sphero Indi Race Car robots as one of the Best Inventions in Education for teaching coding (Time, 2021). Using color tiles, students not only learn to code but also develop transferable skills like analysis and problem-solving (Yu-Hui et al., 2019). This hands-on approach fosters active engagement and helps students apply abstract concepts to master content while making real-life connections to various subjects.

Time Magazine. (2021). The best inventions of 2021.  
https://time.com/collection/best-inventions-2021/

Yu-Hui, C., Yang, D., Wang, S., Baek, Y., Swanson, S., & Chittoori, B.  
(2019). Elementary school student development of STEM attitudes and
perceived learning in a STEM integrated robotics curriculum.    
TechTrends, 63(5), 590-601.  
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-019-00388-0