Great tool for child centered creative brainstorming
Community Review for The Robot Factory by Tinybop
My Take
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.
How I Use It
The app is very open-ended. Kids can create robots of their own designs and test them. I've found children always have stories to tell about their robots after creating them, so I use the app as a story/poetry prompt.
First I ask kids to create robots.
Then I ask about the robot's names and other traits.
Then I ask children to tell me stories about their robots which we help form writing prompts.
Finally, I ask children to write stories about their robots.
The exercise has been so popular I sometimes do a follow-up where, after listening to the other kid's stories, I ask children to tell a story featuring their robot and a d friend's robot (with input from their friends as to how the robot might react).