As the library media specialist at Avail Academy in Edina, Minnesota, Karen Christensson has been utilizing Cubelets in her makerspace for three years. During each day’s forty-five minute library periods, students participate in different makerspace activities that encourage a hands-on approach to learning and problem-solving. Cubelets are one of the stations offered to all third, fourth, and fifth graders at her school.  Thanks to the versatility of Cubelets, Mrs. Christensson is able to provide her students with different robot examples to kickstart their creativity. Her students use t ..read more

Barbie Atkinson has been using Cubelets for four years in her role as media clerk for Park Hill Elementary in Derby, Kansas. As an educator, she enjoys activities with students of all ages throughout the day, where Cubelets are a school-wide favorite for even the youngest learners.  “Cubelets make [the students] more confident learners,” Atkinson says. “It’s a great, engaging learning tool.”  Like many educators who purchase Cubelets, Barbie acquired her kit with the help of a grant. As Park Hill Elementary serves a large military family population, they received a grant from the Dep ..read more

We think about Cubelets in a lot of different ways, but when we were inventing them back in the mid 2000s at Carnegie Mellon, I thought of them mostly as a tangible, three-dimensional form of cellular automata. Consider it a reflection of all the computer science papers I was reading at the time. I was fascinated by distributed systems (as opposed to robots with just one brain), and Stephen Wolfram’s New Kind of Science had been published just a few years prior. These days we usually think about Cubelets as design tools for kids. But I’m thrilled when people push the ceiling higher with Cubele ..read more

It’s the day after Thanksgiving in the USA, and after a holiday hopefully filled with family, gratitude, and a good meal, it feels like the country descends into a tasteless consumerist chaos today for Black Friday. Happily for me, our family escapes this madness and has celebrated Buy Nothing Day for many years. I guess traditionally, people consider the holiday season to start right after Thanksgiving ends, and with an extra day off work, Friday was a good time to think about buying gifts. Retailers noticed this, of course, and started offering discounts to draw shoppers to their store inste ..read more

Across the street from Modular Robotics in Boulder is an industrial air and gas supply store. They’ve got a sign out front with reconfigurable letters and for about three years, it said, “BaLLoon tiME kits Are iN StoCk”. I was never quite sure exactly what that meant, but everyone loves balloons! Diane Walsh, a math and robotics teacher in Connecticut, posted this video of students using GoPiGos for some balloon jousting, and I am a fan ..read more

Happy New Year from Modular Robotics!  Mary here, the new Educational Community Manager on the Modular Robotics team. I’m so excited to join this vibrant community, and I feel endlessly grateful that my job involves exploring Cubelets–and helping you all further your own explorations, too!  I worked as a classroom teacher prior to joining the Modular Robotics team, and I approach my work here through the lens of an educator first. During my time on staff, I’ve begun to develop and update our educational resources, coached educators on expanding Cubelet explorations with their learne ..read more

Like many companies, Modular Robotics has been experiencing stock shortages and shipping delays for the past several months. We know that many of you are looking to get your hands on Cubelets, but please beware of unauthorized resellers!  It may be possible to buy Cubelets from a third-party seller who is offering them on Amazon or eBay, or perhaps even on their own website, but that is not a guarantee that the Cubelets they are selling will be compatible with our current sets. Depending on their age, some Cubelets will lack the hardware and/or software necessary to interface with today’s ..read more

There’s a quirk in the way our brains work. If we can label something with a word, we tend to think we understand it. If you want to check yourself, pick an object like a zipper, a feather, or a forest.  Now, imagine trying to explain how that object works in detail – as if you were describing it to a toddler.  I find myself reaching the limitations of my knowledge quickly and often as I try to help my son learn about the world. Recognizing my limitations has taught me a trick to build a better understanding of how things work. Let’s start by looking at a forest. At first glance, it ..read more

If you want to become a better thinker, it’s time to get curious about complexity. Suppose for a moment that you have the wrong definition of a word. In this post, we would like to suggest that you reconsider your definition of complexity. Sometimes to become a better thinker, you need to rework your mental definitions and concepts. Cognitive flexibility is a crucial attribute of creative problem solvers. Most people tend to think of complexity as a synonym for complicated. Even Google defines complexity as a “state or quality of being intricate or complicated.” While this is a valid definit ..read more

If you want to be a better thinker, you might want to learn to learn like a baby. Babies are remarkably capable constructors of connections. When we are under two years old, our brains run in overdrive to create millions and millions of synapses. By the time we turn two, we have more than twice the number of synaptic connections as our adult brains. Over time we pair down these connections as we experiment and learn from life. However, this rich network of connective links is the key to starting to learn like a baby. By oversupplying connections between mental concepts, babies maximize their ..read more