Digi Tech
This term in Digital Technologies we have had a focus on Robotics and using coding to program them.
We, as a school, have been using five different types of robots during the term, along with using block code for programming.
- BeeBots
- Pro Bots
- Lego - WeDO 2
- Spheros
- NXT robots
- EV3 robots
- Tello Drones
So why do we use robotics at Somerset Primary School?
Robotics is one of the newest subjects in today’s schools, and many who grew up without it might question why it is useful to teach to children these skills. After all, building robots may seem like quite a small niche – though actually, the robotic world is growing at an incredible rate, and learning about it will massively benefit today’s children as they come to enter the workforce. Building a robot requires students to utilize totally different skills to those which might be used in a normal classroom setting.
Robotics addresses the 4 areas of STEM
SCIENCE - gears, speed, ratios, push, pull, friction...
TECHNOLOGY - Computational Thinking, Programming.
ENGINEERING - design, modifying, problem solving...
MATHS - angles, degrees, length, distance, graphing.
Robotics and the Digital Technologies Curriculum go together very well because robotics is often about problem solving and breaking large problems into smaller parts, and the Digital Technologies Curriculum focuses on iterative development. So, students can be presented with a large problem to solve with robotics, and then encouraged to use a design science approach to break that problem down into smaller parts, solve each part individually and then iterate through the solutions to come up with the final larger solution to the whole problem.
- Robots Is Great for Teamwork Skills
- Robotics Helps Students Recognize and Hone Diverse Strengths
- Robotics Helps Students Build Their Confidence
- Robotics Encourages Students to Engage with STEM Subjects
- Robotics Facilitates Problem-Based Learning
“Robotics also brings creativity to these sometimes-dry subjects, allowing students to think about them in new ways. By challenging teenagers to come up with solutions to real life problems and think about the technology they would like to see in the real world, robotics can help them understand the value of STEM subjects,” says Bill Willson, a writer at Ukservicesreviews and OXEssays.