Let’s have a quick look and summarize what has happened here in Finland, lately. From 2016 schools all over the Finland have gotten programming as one of the skills that has to be introduced to students as part of the curriculum. It is not a separate school subject, but a part of other STEM studies.

Not only the students have this new skill under the development, but also the teachers and parents have to learn new angle on IT. This is why ROBBO has also expanded the variety of workshops. Not all are heading to achieve the perfect skills in coding, but the satisfactory level is enough in order to support children thru their education.

One of the youngest participants in ROBBO workshop for Mothers in Business network

So, lately, ROBBO has been introduced to wide range of new friends in all ages. Mothers in Business organisation invited ROBBO to teach mothers about coding and robotics. In this workshop the youngest participants had barely turned few months old. These cute babies were exploring ROBBO robots with all senses: tasting included. And the moms were showing outstanding concentration skills. Despite the disruptions and the higher level of background noise, these moms were one of the quickest learning groups we have ever met. And for more, they also asked to short cuts and copy-paste -options in very early stage of lesson in order to optimize the time frame in use. Effectiveness – that is the prober word to narrate this event.

The workshop for Mothers in Business was a great success and the first step on our journey to advice parents to be parts of ROBBO world. The demand on this kind of workshops seems endless. We can happily say that the parents really are interested on learning and understanding the skills that are familiar to their children.

Fantastic new school in Ikaalinen invited ROBBO to be part of training day for teachers

One of ROBBO’s main advantages is the easy access to coding. Our task is to introduce programming and robots to every teacher, not only those who already have good skills on IT, but specially to those who have no previous knowledge. To make this happen we were happy to join over a hundred teacher from Ikaalinen and Hämeenkyrö in their training day.

The whole group of teachers was divided in small groups that took apart Seppo adventure. The groups went thru new school building and perform different kind of tasks. One of these tasks was ROBBO. We asked every group to play a short game using Robbo Scratch and Lab, and to implement the elements that could make this game better.

The groups found out many different elements – for example sound effects, more visual background, different levels etc. to improve our simple game. But, this was not the only achievement: many teachers had their first experience on playing computer game. The co-ordinating thumbs and eyes was not easy: what is self-evident for many kids, was surprisingly difficult for adults.

ROBBO is wishing you all a joyful and most active spring time! Please, represent ROBBO to new people and share the fun! We are sure to make the best we can in our behalf!

-Kati

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