Marty the Robot

First up, meet Marty, a proper walking robot with a friendly face, but he's also a powerful platform for learning, designed to give kids a fun and hands-on experience with coding, robotics and engineering. Simple yet sophisticated, Marty is the price of a smart toy but has the features of a real robot. You can start to program him with Scratch, then use Python, JavaScript and even a Raspberry Pi + ROS.

In an independent evidence survey, Liz Dighton of Boroughmuir High School in the UK, who has used Marty the Robot for two years, said ‘I love using him with my classes to get them inspired about learning to code’. She found Marty significantly increased student collaboration as ‘pupils work together in groups when using Marty and help each other to code’.

Impact evidence:

Cubetto

Cubetto by Primo Toys works out of the box, with little to no prep or prior experience required to teach with it. Cubetto turns coding into a tangible, age-appropriate experience that reduces screen-time, increases engagement, and enhances learning, and it claims to be as fun for educators as it is for young students.

Miles Berry, Principal Lecturer in Computing Education at University of Roehampton says ‘the tactile nature of the programming interface is lovely, as is being able to see and edit the program directly. I rate it very positively, and my six-year-old loves it’.

KUBO

KUBO is the TagTile Robot, and it is just like a puzzle, which makes it great for hands-on learning. Students can be taken from simple to advanced levels of programming; covering routes, functions, subroutines and loops.

KUBO comes with free, beautifully illustrated lesson plans and task cards for your students, as well as video tutorials and quick start guides to help educators get up and running. Take a look at one of their videos here.

CUE

The award-winning CUE robot by Wonder Workshop takes students from block-based code to state-machine and text-based programming. With a growing library of in-app demos, tutorial, and challenges, Cue supports students’ self-guided exploration of programming languages, robotic capabilities, and personally meaningful projects.

Bee-Bot and Blue-Bot

Bee-Bot and Blue-Bot from TTS are probably two of the best known floor robots for the primary classroom, and a whole world of activities and supporting materials have been developed to support their integral use in the classrooms daily. Now interactive, the new and improved Bee-Bot is able to talk to other Bee-Bots and Blue-Bots. They even have their own hashtags with a following in their own right #beebot #bluebot

LEGO SPIKE Prime

We simply can’t end a robotics list without mentioning the mighty Lego Education. LEGO Education SPIKE Prime is a powerful STEAM learning solution for years 7-9 that combines LEGO bricks, Scratch programming language, and a programmable multi-port Hub to help every learner become a confident learner. Students can build and program their first model in minutes, and teachers can complete a full lesson - including building and coding - within an impressive 45 minutes.

Evaluate robotics and coding products like Marty the Robot free of charge from the Edtech Impact platform - a school review driven discovery engine, supporting schools to make the best edtech choices to achieve maximum impact.