Episode description

On today's episode of the TeacherCast Podcast, we welcome Kat Kennewell and Phil Grigonis on the program to showcase the amazing Edison Robot from Microbric.

In 2014, with only a tiny team based in South Australia, Microbric launched the Edison robot with a bang. The wildly successful Kickstarter campaign hit 524% funding and the popularity of Edison has only grown from there. The highly versatile and easy-to-use robot is now distributed globally and can be found in schools in more than 50 countries around the world.

Microbric’s vision for the Edison robot is to create an affordable, comprehensive STEM teaching resource for coding and robotics education for students in years 3 – 9. To support this vision, users of Edison have access to free educational resources and programming apps.

The Edison robot can be programmed multiple ways: using pre-set barcodes, EdWare, EdPy and now, EdBlocks.

EdBlocks, the newest programming language for Edison robots, is a fully icon-based language that is super easy to use. A drag-and-drop block-based system, EdBlocks is intuitive and fun, even for younger users. Perfect for introducing anyone to programming, EdBlocks is ideal for students aged 8 to 12 years old.

Students can then take their programming further with EdWare, a hybrid graphical language, and EdPy, a highly versatile text-based programming language based on Python.

Best of all? Access to all programming languages and associated teaching resources is absolutely free.

Learn more at www.meetedison.com

• Homepage
• EdBlocks
• EdBlocks App
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• YouTube

Product and Marketing Manager for Microbric, a South Australia-based educational robotics company, Kat has experience working in education, eLearning, and technology. An avid writer, Kat believes the right words can connect people with the ideas they need to make a better world for today and tomorrow.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KatKennewell
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katkennewell/

Phil Grigonis is a Technology Education teacher at Upper Perkiomen Middle School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems and a Masters in Technology Education. Phil has been teaching for the past three years, and has worked for IBM and Accenture Consulting in previous careers. In addition to teaching, he is the advisor at his school for the Technology Student Association (TSA) and a member of the Technology Education and Engineering Association of Pennsylvania (TEEAP).

Check out Phil's Edison Robot Website

• Unparalleled value-for-money and is supported by free downloadable lesson plans