Robotics & Coding Become Part of Makini’s Cambridge Curriculum
“Creativity is the secret sauce to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.”
Aside from the excitement students muster when they see a robotics kit morph into a controllable arm or programmable LED lights, coding and robotics offer a little bit more than a fun classroom experience.
This year will be a year to fully embrace robotics and coding as part of our academic offer. We intend to allow our learners to be as creative as possible using available resources to create their projects. Robotics and coding are among the pillars of our educational philosophy and differentiated lessons bringing about lifelong learning, confidence and relevant skills for the modern world.
When students participate in coding and robotics activities, they’re learning skills of the future workplace, such as teamwork and collaboration, problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity, the ability to fail and persevere, and more.
In Makini Schools, we use Arduino Starter Kits combined with the Arduino IDE, that allow students to learn basic coding language such as variables, functions. In addition, students get to learn basic electronics which is fundamentally an area that robotics heavily relies on.
Students learn to create projects in 4 main areas:
- Lights: Traffic lights, Car Indicators, Decorative lights, Emergency lights, Hazard lights etc
- Sound; Alarms, Sirens etc
- Motion: Robotics arm, auto gate, auto doors
- Sensors: Motion sensors, Sound sensors etc
At the end of each skill area, the student will be expected to come up with a project that aims at solving a challenge at school or society. They will be given an opportunity to pitch for their project. Apart from robotics, students have an opportunity to learn web-design using:
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript
- Introduction to web development using a CMS
We have also added an additional innovative solution.
Parents, learners and school leaders can follow skill progression, view learner projects, assignments (expected resources) and get general information about robotics and coding.
These will act as a progress record for our students since this is a skill-based program.
The program has started with Year 5-9. It has been a great success so far with learners coming up with innovative projects. For example:
- Sifa Welova has come up with a traffic light system with sound to be used during Corona.
- Tamaiya Mutitu has come up with decorative lights, hazard, car indicator ideas.
