Community reviews for The Robot Factory by Tinybop

The Robot Factory and Creature Garden are two of my favorite classroom apps for open-ended creativity. They each give just enough context for kids to start riffing and creating their own worlds. The robots they create are often avatars of themselves or what they wish to be. These exercises are always revealing. No real critique other than I wish there was a special classroom version of the app that made managing lots of kid's accounts a bit easier. We only have a few ipads so kids have to share and create multiple accounts on one machine. Managing this could be a bit easier.

I think this is a very engaging and high quality tool. I would use it with lots of age levels...even adults fight over it! I would just make sure to give it a lot of content support. This is a place where application can happen or ideas can be brainstormed but it is not rooted in skills or content.

I have been really impressed with what my students have designed and then changed on their robots. The test mode of this app teaches them so many scientific concepts that they can then problem solve how to fix. This app is hands-on problem solving that leads to great discussions with students on why things didn't work they wanted them to and then how to go about fixing the problem. My only negative that I have witnessed is the app will freeze-up while a student is designing their robot and the only way to unfreeze is to close the app and reopen it and sometimes it does not save their work.