Kevin Kearney found Marty V2:

• Significantly builds student knowledge“Marty helps children develop their developing code in a progressive and constructive way. Children are able to build on existing knowledge and experiences to create new or experimental code. Using Marty allows them to see the results of their work and problem solve any bugs that may occur.”
• Significantly increases student collaboration“Children frequently discuss the best coding blocks to use and provide reasons for their suggestions. More able children are able to justify their choices to their peers allowing others to develop their own knowledge of coding.”
• Slightly reduces attainment gap“Giving children access to opportunities to code with Marty at school may increase experiences of this in certain schools. More research over a longer time period would be required to support any impact on the attainment gap”
• Significantly improves behaviour or wellbeing“Children have generally been very engaged when using Marty and look forward to lessons involving Marty. I have used Marty as communication support with children who have poor or limited language skills. Children are more comfortable telling Marty about what is upsetting them with an adult controlling simple responses to pretend Marty is listening. We have used this very successfully to calm and distract children who are distressed.”
• Significantly improves teacher knowledge and skills“Personally, I will try out the code provided with the lesson plans to make sure I understand how it all works and what bugs/problems the children are likely to encounter. Other teachers have reported taking a similar approach. This has increased my own knowledge of coding and the reasoning behind using particular pieces of code.”