Foundation Teacher: Why Buy?

Many of the things you might do with a puppet or a teddy bear you can do with Roamer. But Roamer is interactive: it “comes” alive. For example in an activity from the Foundation Curriculum Roamer talks to the children. It tells them it is lost, frightened and does not know who it is. It is a robotic Tamagochi, a mechanical pet that needs their help. The children can use the Disguise Kits to give it an identity and through RoamerWorld a name. The next time they switch Roamer on it says its name and invites them to press its keys and explore what it can do.

You can change what Roamer does, the way it looks and what it says. Roamer activities form a wide range of learning scenarios for the students to explore. It gives them opportunities to develop their personal and social skills. They understand the world through visual, spatial, auditory and kinaesthetic experiences. Roamer encourages students, it affirms their actions; it questions them and stimulates the next steps in their learning journey through the curriculum. Most Roamer activities do not seek right answers, but will encourage children to devise possible solutions. It empowers them to make judgements and encourages the desire to improve.

Roamer is practical and flexible. You can use it in whole class, group or individual sessions. It’s designed to withstand the rigours of the classroom. It works on desktops or floors. The high capacity batteries normally only require charging weekly. The product is child proofed for safety.

What to Buy

Robots

• Early Years Roamer: This is the simplest of the Standard Roamers. It uses a counting paradigm to determine the number of moves to make. It has 4 User Keys that let you customise the robot for an activity (Pen Up, Pen Down, Dog Bark, Car Horn, etc). You can create your own User Key Definitions in RoamerWorld. Check out Free and Useful Stuff and you will find some free downloads for the Users Keys.
• Standard Behaviour CD: The Standard Roamers are aimed at general areas by age. However, there is overlap and you will find it useful to have the Behaviour for the Standard Roamer and below the age group you deal with. This CD contains the keypad graphics and Behaviour of the Early Years, Infant, Primary and. Junior Roamers. Using the computer interface you can download the Behaviour of your choice and print out the keypad graphic.

General Accessories

• High Capacity Rechargable Batteries: This is a 6 pack rechargeable batteries required for a Roamer. These top quality high capacity batteries and although you might be able to buy them cheaper you will find these a better for a number of reasons. First in normal everyday usage you will only need to recharge them approximately once per week. Secondly there is a limit to the number of times you can recharge batteries. The number of recharge cycles for these batteries is very high. You can leave these batteries discharged for long periods of time without detriment.
• Fast Battery Charger: This will recharge up to eight batteries at once. Even a 30 minute charge can keep your Roamer going for a lesson. So no more problems with dead batteries!
• Computer Interface: This interface is needed when downloading from the computer to the keypad and vice versa. So it is essential when using the behaviour CD and necessary for RoamerWorld.

Activity Accessories

• Number Line Mat: This Number Line Mat provides numbers 0 to 10 on one side and 0 to -10 on the reverse. Buy two and you can go from -10 to 10. A single number line is 2m long and 20 cm wide.
• Multi-Activity Mat: This is a smaller version of the popular multi-activity mat developed for Classic Roamer. By providing a host of images, numbers, colours, shapes you can develop a multitude of activities. It comes with Teacher's Notes and activities.
• Clear Grid 5x5 Mat: This is a clear 5 x 5 grid mat (1.2m x 1.2m). Use it to create your own mats. Place over a map for easy navigation or create your own Roamer environment using pictures or the children's' drawings. You can combine the mats to make larger areas. When you put two together they form a 5 x 11 grid. Put 4 together and you will get a 11 x 11 grid. Note some activities will contain drawings that you can download for the children to colour in.
• Instruction Cards: This is a set of cards with Roamer instructions printed on them. They are very useful in a lot of Roamer games and activities.
• Pen Pack: You program Roamer to lift or lower the pen. The Pen Pack is great for areas of Maths and Geometry as well as drawing routes and more creative artistic endeavours. The Pack contains the pen mechanism that just plugs into the base, pen holder and 5 pens. You can replace the pens with any of the Berol range – including Colour Sticks.
• Transfers: Transfers are 5 Sheets of shapes that you can cut out and put on to Roamer as a quick way of creating characters. They don't use glue and you can take them off, rearrange them or reuse them.
• Disguise Kits: Disguise Kits is a package consisting of patterns that allow you to cut out and make fabric covers and other parts like ears and noses for Roamer. They let you transform your robot into a dog, or a cat, a pig or a cow… …a whole range of cuddly characters. You can make various bits yourself and then let students put them together in different ways. Alternatively some of the parts are easy enough for the children to make.

RoamerWorld

• Basic RoamerWorld Suite Software: Basic RoamerWorld RoamerWorld is a suite that consists of several different modules. Basic RoamerWorld is the core software which all the other modules "plug into". With this software you can: ► Use any of the Standard or Classic Roamer to write programs on the screen ► Watch these Roamers run on the screen ► Send these programs to the appropriate Roamer ► Save programs written on Roamer on the computer ► Edit Roamer programs on the computer ► Personalise Roamer ● Name it ● Customise Roamer's verbal feedback ● Calibrate Roamer accuracy ● Change the default for parameters like speed, units of move and turn volume, etc. ► Create User Key Functionality ► Access open source activities and manage behaviour changes ► Launch Logo programs and their interfaces In addition to these features the software comes with a range of Roamer Activities. ► Speech Centre Module The speech centre allows you to create and edit dialogue used by the Roamer. You can do this by recording speech, or using the text to speech facility. Also included in the price is a software licence to increase the speech capacity of 5 Roamers without needing to increase the robots memory. The price provides you with a licence of one of the Roamer voices. You can buy a licence to increase the speech capability of more than 5 Roamers and purchase other voices for Roamer. Prices on application. ► Activity Generator The Activity creator contains the tools needed to create your own keypad behaviours and modules.

Contact us now

If you're stuck and need advice just contact us:
Tel: 020 8673 2233
Email: info@valiant-technology.com