It seems everyone is trying to get kids coding and it’s not surprising, with the threat of skills shortages plaguing the engineering industry.
Robbo is another company trying to bring robots to the classroom with its devices and tutorials to help children learn the ropes.
The company’s Robot Kit runs on an Arduino microcontroller, with a magnetically-changeable LED (flash light), light sensor, touch sensor, proximity sensor and line sensors to mix and match. Up to five sensors can be installed at any one time and it’s ready to work out of the box using pre-installed Scratch code.
The Scratch platform can be used to re-programme the robot, with each element displaying as a coloured box children can move around to make the robot their own, while advanced users can add more functionality using Arduino IDE.
Robbo’s Lab environment is an educational open source board that can be used by educators to explore physics, robotics and programming. It comprises an Arduino microcontroller and a built-in microphone, light sensor, speaker, LEDs, a linear potentiometer and buttons. It too can be used straight out of the box using Scratch or Arduino IDE.
One of the schools using the tools is Vanttila school in Espoo, where coding has become part of the curriculum thanks to the company. In fact, such skills are being built into the curriculum across Finland from next autumn, with Vantilla school setting the precedent.
“Robbo is a good tool for studying coding. It is an enjoyable way of learning the basics of coding with the help of Scratch image-based coding language. A real robot inspires children to do and learn.”
