 Hey, it's Ben Popper with The Verge. I'm here hanging out with Sphero's newest product, the Spark Plus. This little ball is aimed at the education market. It's meant to teach kids about robotics and coding and just to make all kinds of lessons more fun. We went through a bunch of stuff today. I got to drive a chariot that was built. I had a boat and this little thing swam around. I made some art and programmed my way through a maze. It comes with an app, Lightning Lab, that lets you do drag and drop coding. You can also peek inside those little modules and see what the actual code looks like behind it. It's also kind of like a social network. You can upload your ideas for lessons. You can like people's stuff and leave comments. You can share lesson plans with people around the world. Right now, the original Spark is in about a thousand schools across the US and Canada. This one that's coming out is the same price, $129. It's got a tougher skin so it won't scratch. It's got smarter Bluetooth so it's easier to connect. Other than that, it's pretty much the same thing. Sphero's had a lot of success over the last year with this. There's a whole bunch of different Sphero's. There's the normal one, the rough and tumble one for outdoors, the one that's tied in with Star Wars merchandising. The one that's most interesting to me as a parent is the educational one. It's meant to teach your kids about computer science and help them get the kind of jobs that are going to be available before the robots take them all from us. Much better. Sorry.
 Hey, it's Ben Popper with The Verge. I'm here hanging out with Sphero's newest product, the Spark Plus.
 This little ball is aimed at the education market. It's meant to teach kids about robotics and coding and just to make all kinds of lessons more fun.
 We went through a bunch of stuff today. I got to drive a chariot that was built. I had a boat and this little thing swam around.
 I made some art and programmed my way through a maze.
 It comes with an app, Lightning Lab, that lets you do drag and drop coding.
 You can also peek inside those little modules and see what the actual code looks like behind it.
 It's also kind of like a social network. You can upload your ideas for lessons.
 You can like people's stuff and leave comments. You can share lesson plans with people around the world.
 Right now, the original Spark is in about a thousand schools across the US and Canada.
 This one that's coming out is the same price, $129. It's got a tougher skin so it won't scratch.
 It's got smarter Bluetooth so it's easier to connect.
 Other than that, it's pretty much the same thing. Sphero's had a lot of success over the last year with this.
 There's a whole bunch of different Sphero's. There's the normal one, the rough and tumble one for outdoors, the one that's tied in with Star Wars merchandising.
 The one that's most interesting to me as a parent is the educational one. It's meant to teach your kids about computer science
 and help them get the kind of jobs that are going to be available before the robots take them all from us.
 Much better.
 Sorry.