By Coder Z
Image source: https://www.modrobotics.com/
Everything evolves. We witness evolution constantly. Technology, human relationships, hierarchies structures, and even the way we interact with nature, is constantly evolving.
For that reason, it becomes hard to see critical aspects of our daily life that aren’t evolving at the speed of some other items. Many areas of our lives are stuck in a model that has been around for several decades. We haven’t even tried to make some tiny changes in these aspects, which change from one person to the other, in order to test what would happen.
We do see, for example, that schools are walking a different path. Trying to incorporate the necessary spaces, subjects or tools that will help their current students to become the leaders of a world that is, as we mentioned before, constantly evolving.
But which kind of programs can allow kids in school to explore, to try new things, and to develop numerous skills that are going to assist them in conquering the world in the near future? What are the subjects we should work on to become the architects of a positive and transcendental revolution?
We believe in robotics. Not only because we are fans of sensors, gyros, motors, and LEGO pieces; but because we deeply believe in what a robotics curriculum can bring to our children’s development.
So, why do we think every school should have a robotics curriculum, and what will they achieve by implementing one? Check it out:
Kids will gain Problem-Solving Skills:
By having a robotics curriculum, you are encouraging kids to discover different ways to solve the same issue. After understanding the issue itself, students will be able to see what are the paths they could walk in order to solve the specific challenge.
Do they need to focus on the robot’s sensors? Maybe a little adjustment to the wheels? These and many more questions will enable your students to analyze the full scenario of possibilities, adding a 360º perspective, and allow them to solve problems in a smarter, more enlightened way.
And of course, it is an engaging, fun activity to transmit this skill to them.
Students will understand the power of Teamwork:
We need one another. This world wouldn’t work if we couldn’t divide tasks and acknowledge each other expertises.
Having a robotics curriculum will create in your students the need to discover what are they good at, and at the same time, what are their classmates’ talents.
This way, at the moment of programming, coding, or assembling a robot, they will know who has the necessary skills already incorporated in order to complete a certain mission.
Teamwork and self-paced learning are not that far apart. Accepting their own, and their classmates’ pace will only make our students more ready for a world that is full of different and amazing people, with different skills and strengths.
They will develop deep Critical Thinking:
Taking a deep look into a specific challenge and asking themselves: “How do I solve this?”, instead of “Why should I solve this?”, will permit students to have a different approach to a specific problem.
We truly believe that robotics can be the trigger for students to ask themselves the first question.
A learning environment that is engaging, that allows them to practice to get into robotics competitions, that will give them skills that are actually super useful for their professional future, will ensure that kids take this robotics curriculum seriously and that the focus will be on the how and not on the why.
Creativity is the key to solving the world’s challenges:
“Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results”, and we agree. Creativity has become an essential ability to succeed in a world that is more competitive every day.
Having a robotics curriculum in school will help students strengthen their creativeness. Why? Because activities that go from picking the right sensor, to designing the right logo for the robotics team in a competition, need someone with a wide open mind.
Creativity can be implemented in the code of a robot to make it cleaner, or in understanding which robotics competition better fits the needs of a specific class or school.
A good way to encourage creativity in the robotics world is teaching robotics through a gamified environment (like the one CoderZ offers), where kids won’t be afraid to just try, and let their minds soar.
The process and the results are, almost, equally important:
This is not true only of the results, but also the road they traveled to get to the final point.
A few weeks ago, we had the privilege of hosting a webinar together with Mr. Oded Reichsfeld, in which he talked about the importance of the processes and in which he strongly criticized standardized tests.
In robotics, we understand how important the process is. Students put a robot together, write code, try it out, and discover new -amazing- ways to solve a specific challenge.
At the end of the day, everything they learned during the process should be evaluated, not whether the robot got to the finish line or not.
What can you do now?
If you want to learn more about our Coding Robots curriculum, we invite you to watch a recorded session of a webinar given by Mr. Gary Garber. Maybe, this article is the sign you were looking for when searching for new, exciting ways to keep your students engaged.
Discover more about robotics with RobotLAB and Coder Z!
CoderZ is an online educational environment that improves students 21st century skills, while they are having fun programming their own virtual cyber robot. CoderZ and RobotLAB has different lessons to do at home! Check them out Here
