One of my biggest complaints about so much of the entertainment products we supply to kids is that they take away the creative process. Most video games trap kids into a rat's maze where they have to kill or be killed. Yes, I know in some games you just "dematerialize" or "get stunned", but let's face it, most video games have animated violence at their center.
Enter Ozobot. Part toy, part science project. Part game, part art project. The $49.99 Ozobot itself is about the size of a ping pong ball, smaller by far than the Sphero, both in stature and price. At its core, the Ozobot has one trick. It can follow a line. Draw a line and (like many toy and robotic sets before it) it can move along the path. If that were all it did, Ozobot would merely be a novelty.
Ozobot has a special power, however, that makes it smarter and more powerful. It can see and respond to color. At its simplest, this means as Ozobot travels along a line it changes the color of its LEDs to light up accordingly. You can draw your own pathways, download and print tracks from their site, or have it play on an iPad.
Ozobot becomes more compelling when you learn that it has an entire visual programming language based on color and pattern. You can draw course that make the robot speed up, slow down, spin, even count, based up what it sees. Kids can make their own tracks using markers or apps and make their robot do tricks. It all seems like "fun", but really Ozobot is teaching the fundamentals of programming.
Ozobot won't be for every child. It doesn't have any killing, any licensed characters, or cartoons based on it. It offers both open ended and more directed play for children to explore. It takes your kids seriously, providing entertainment that is both creative and an introduction to the way the world works in the post-industrial, computer/robotic 21st century.
