I always like a free trial, although often the free trial is a recipe for disaster for many systems since it rarely comes with free CPD! SO when I saw that Bomberbot had a free trial I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time on the system in my virtual BETT tour.
First you sign up your school and you receive an email from Bomberbot with your school code. You then can sign up as a teacher using the school code. This takes you to the main Bomberbot screen where you are given a brief tour of the main features of the admin system for setting up classes and students. FIRST ISSUE: It looks like you need to do this all manually which is a big issue if you are in a large school. QUESTION: Does Bomberbot enable set up from a school MIS or, at the very least csv files?
The first lesson is really, really simple and, to be honest, plain boring. The graphics belong in the 1980's and the activities could have been done better with the LOGO that we used on a BBC B, never mind a high end Windows 8 machine! It involved using arrow keys to move a robot around a screen, sometimes around objects but, frankly, I've taught 4 year olds who would have got bored quickly with this.
Looking at the other lessons were still presented with the same, rather awful user interface and the same, rather boring activities.
The price of Bomberbot is expensive for what it is, the activities seem boring to me and the user interface is back in the stone age. It's a shame because an online learning environment for coding would be great but this is not it. Perhaps they should go take a look at Kahn Academy.
Hi Alex,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your feedback we are going to consider the details that you mention.
Right now we are focussing on teachers with no coding experience in primary schools.
I know that the very first classes are very basic, we are trying to explain with very simple examples what are the concepts behind software programming.
At the moment we do not want the people feels intimidated by more complex activities and desists the idea to teach about coding as happens with other platforms.
We are a young company and we are working on the site constantly, testing which things work and which do not, we really appreciate a good constructive criticism.
Giovanny - well said and a great reply. I look forward to seeing you guys develop over time.
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