To Teachers, From Sphero
Dear Teachers,
First of all, Hi. We love you. We wouldn’t be here making robots if teachers like you hadn’t inspired us, pushed us, and encouraged us to bring enough gum for the whole class. So, thank you for that.
And thank you for Sphero Edu. We built the platform but you made it a thriving community full of ideas, creativity, and collaboration. This is what we mean when we say #BeyondCode. Thanks to you, Sphero Edu is more than just a tool to program robots, it’s a place where teachers, students, and learners everywhere come together to inspire each other.
Because Sphero Edu is an important resource for teachers and students, we’re always looking for ways to improve it. We regularly engage in conversations with educators, send out surveys, and visit schools around the world to discover what’s working and what needs improvement.
In fact, conversations like these led to the revamping of our Thursday Learn Day series. Before, #ThursdayLearnDay was an educational series that introduced a fun, but somewhat complex, program for teachers and students to run and modify as they wished. After speaking with teachers (including some Sphero Heroes), we switched up the format a bit. Now, #ThursdayLearnDay is aimed at learners of all ages and skill levels. Each bite-sized episode focuses on a key computer science concept and then encourages users to work it into their own program. We think this is a huge improvement and it’s all thanks to your thoughtful feedback.
Recently, we launched Sphero Academy, an online resource where teachers can access professional development courses, education kits, and more. The mission behind Sphero Academy is simple. We want to give teachers more than a two-page Quick Start Guide to our robots — we want to give you personal, face-to-face training and support so you have everything you need to grow and inspire. And just like all of our other offerings, Sphero Academy is a dynamic, ever-evolving resource, so if there’s something you want us to improve or a feature you’d like to see, please let us know. Our door is always open.
In the coming months, we plan on rolling out more user-suggested features and tools aimed at increasing collaboration and transparency and reducing bottlenecks. So, keep an eye out.
Teachers, you are the reason we do what we do. We realize thanking you in a blog post is an all too tiny token of our immense appreciation, but what if we thank you in a blog post AND give you a stick of gum? We brought enough for everyone this time. It’s wintergreen with little crystals.
THANK YOU and have a wonderful Teacher Appreciation Week.
Love,
Sphero
