Dash is ideal for kids ages 5 to 14, making it a great choice for elementary and middle school students. It’s perfect for introducing kids to coding, robotics, and problem-solving at an early age and grows with students when they’re ready to tackle more complex coding concepts and programming languages, like JavaScript.

No. The Make Wonder platform includes a Read Aloud toggle teachers can turn on for early or emerging readers. Puzzles are also heavily visual, so students who struggle with text can still work independently.

No. Dash does not contain a camera. It uses sensors to detect obstacles, hear sounds, and respond to button presses.

No. Dash uses block-based coding, so students drag and connect visual blocks instead of typing syntax. Elementary school students can start in Blockly, where they build sequences, then move into loops, events, and conditionals before transitioning to text-based coding.

Not on tablets or phones. Once the apps are installed on an iPad or Android tablet or phone, an internet connection is not required to code a physical Dash. You do need internet to download the apps and to use Blockly for the web on a laptop or Chromebook.

Once fully charged, the battery lasts for approximately 5 hours of active play. Charge time is under an hour. Plan on charging robots between class periods rather than during them, and check the port light: it blinks while charging and holds steady when the battery is full.

No. The lithium-ion battery is internal and not user-replaceable. Attempting to remove it can void the warranty. If a robot stops holding a charge, open a support ticket at help.makewonder.com.

Three things: Dash has a personality, Dash comes ready to use, and Dash senses the world well enough to react to it. Dash turns and tilts its head, lights up in color, plays sounds, and can speak in a voice students record themselves. Students name their robot. They talk to it. They apologize to it when it runs into a wall. Persistence through failure is difficult to teach directly and easy to get from a robot students care about. Dash arrives fully assembled and charged, with no construction step, no batteries to insert, and no small parts to lose between periods. Dash detects obstacles in front and behind, hears sound and locates the direction it came from, and takes input from the buttons on its head. Those inputs are what let students write conditionals and events rather than only sequences. It also opens up maze challenges, follow-the-sound tasks, and interaction between students and robots that go beyond driving a route. Dash does all of this without a camera, which keeps the privacy conversation with families and IT simple.

Yes, because the coding environment changes even though the hardware does not. Younger students start by drawing routes and sequencing simple blocks. From there they move into Blockly, where loops, events, functions, and conditionals build across the year. Students who are ready to go further use Blockly Pro, which lets them toggle between block coding and JavaScript in the Chrome browser. A school buying Dash for a 1st  grade classroom is buying hardware that still has somewhere to go in 6th grade, which changes the math on a district purchase.

This is where Dash tends to do its best work, especially across mixed ages. Group work around one robot produces brainstorming and negotiation rather than parallel play. A younger child can propose what Dash should do while an older one writes the commands, and both are contributing to the same problem. Wonder Workshop encourages teachers to help students choose roles, for example: