It’s already said that LEGO products make for potentially helpful teaching aids at times. But the brand also has a focused line just meant for that: LEGO Education. The Education product lines are non-retail, available only on LEGO’s online portal. We’ve featured several of these sets before, and LEGO has a new one to introduce.
A number of the more recent LEGO Education specialized sets have been geared towards introductory coding and programing. The new LEGO SPIKE Prime is no different. With over 500 Technic-like mechanical pieces and an electronic hub, it’s a fantastic new building system allowing for coding to articulate and drive constructs.
The digital aspect of LEGO Education’s SPIKE Prime is, as usual, a downloadable app for mobile devices that can develop programs using Scratch coding language. These programs are then transmitted to the electronic hubs on any SPIKE Prime build, to perform the desire motion or animatronic effect according to instructions.
SPIKE Prime will be getting its first major test as an educational tool with LEGO packing it along with other Education products in a “Confidence in Learning” toolkit. These kits will be provided by LEGO to select schools around the world, to establish LEGO Education and SPIKE Prime as valuable aids in a hands-on education.
For schools in the US interested in trying LEGO Education SPIKE Prime, they can already preorder the system on the Education portal of LEGO’s official website. It will become generally available later on August 2019.