Parents and teachers sometimes shy away from introducing younger children to coding and robotics because they are under the impression that these subject areas are too complex for kids in the early grades. We are pleased to say, however, that, thanks to the recent revolution in educational robotics tools, there is no reason to fear coding.
If there are two students in the classroom and one is following along, trying to stay awake while a classmate recites a passage from their textbook and the other one is living the concepts the first one is reading about, which do you think is more fully engaged? No, this isn’t a trick question. The answer is Student 2 and the reason is active learning opportunities.
We’ve come a long way from the days of the first robot toys for kids, and now we are able to use incredible technology to simulate behaviors very close to the ones displayed by our actual furry friends. You may have guessed—based on that introduction—that we have recently come across an EdTech tool that fulfills this fantasy.
The webinar will be hosted by Dennis Kambeitz, who works at a company called Robots.Education. Dennis is a world leader in understanding various impacts that robotics and tech will bring to the workforce and what needs to be done in schools to prepare students for it. Like us at Eduporium, he knows this chance is bigger and coming faster than most people realize.
Some educators prefer to stay away from screens altogether. With that being the case, how can we make sure students are still getting the 21st century education that they need to succeed? Luckily, early childhood education companies, like Primo Toys, are aware of this issue, and they care very much about making this type of critical education accessible.
The original Ozobot has made a huge impact in the field of STEM education with its accessible and intuitive control scheme and the Ozobot team is continually working hard to give students even more ways to learn. The Evo does everything the original Ozobot can do, including following lines of color-coded programming drawn by hand.
It’s widely-accepted that robotics education is critical to building 21st century STEM skills because it combines so many essential disciplines depending on what each specific robot can do. I bring up my own history with robotics because it’s very relevant to this week’s post on the Meccano Meccanoid G15KS, one of the more complex STEM robots.
While we realize that there’s a lot of technology for helping kids of all ages learn, we might sometimes forget that there are also tools to help students who learn in different ways. When it comes to school children with learning differences, EdTech tools can help them learn in the same ways they help the average kid learn—grabbing their attention with hands-on challenges.
According to Code.org statistics, about 90 percent of parents in the United States want their children to learn how to code. On the other hand, only 40 percent of students in K-12 schools are currently learning about computer science. Considering the huge demand for technically competent workers in today’s growing-by-the-minute IT sector, learning how to code is key.
The search continues to provide teachers and parents with an entry-level robot that ensures little ones aren’t left out of STEM learning. This week I experimented with one of our simpler robotics toys, the Mini MiP, which is developed by WowWee and serves as a smaller, less complex version of WowWee’s MiP robot.
