Published October 16, 2017
By Dave CatlinDancing is one of Roamer’s favourite pastimes. The Classic Roamer started it over twenty years ago and the EU Code Week gave her daughter the chance to follow in her wheel tracks. Find out what happened at the University College London’s Code Event and how you can use this idea in your classroom. (more…)
Published December 24, 2016 By Michael RabyWhen a 4th Grade student started to choke on a chicken bone her friends programmed Roamer to make a dramatic life-saving dash to the hospital. Teacher and Roamer enthusiast Michael Raby set this and other problems for his students to solve in a wonderfully playful lesson. (more…)
Published June 5, 2015 By Dave Catlin and Andrew CsizmadiaValiant Technology started working with educational robots in 1983. In those days people used Logo to program Turtles. Now you can use Roamer ScratchX to program Roamer. In this article I explain how it makes an ideal partnership.
Published November 6, 2014 By Marcus Topham and Dave CatlinThis feature was first published in April 1991. In it teacher Marcus Topham explains how sensors transform the capabilities of a robot. In the original article Marcus explained what sensors mean to a robot and how where you find sensors in the animal world and in machines and some suggestions of how to introduce sensors to children. Of course things since those days the “connected world” has arrived and sensors are everywhere. However, the basic ideas behind sensors has not changed, so we have taken the opportunity to update the article.
Published July 4, 2014 By Dave CatlinIn 1987 Bradford teacher Doreen Gregory inspired me to design an educational version of Big Trak. That was Classic Roamer. Tomorrow the world’s greatest cycle race, the Tour de France starts in my home town of Leeds. The first stage takes the riders through Yorkshire Dales where I spent a lot of my youth walking and potholing. This is a heady mixture of nostalgia and homesickness mixed with some Yorkshire pudding and French joie de vivre (I never expected to see a map with à côté de Buttertubs marked on it). I had to create a somewhat personal Roamer Topical Topic.
