The summer is the two months when children are looking forward to it and their parents are trying to figure out how to spend these days of endless free time in a meaningful way. We thought about this as well and came up with the concept of a summer school with micro: bits, where CANCOM kids aged 8 to 13 will experience the tangible side of programming.
25. July 2024
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Reading time: 3 min.
Micro: bits are not new and were developed in 2016 by the BBC to support the teaching of programming in computer science lessons, and after the end of the pilot project nearly 90% of children stated that they could learn to program. No one expected such a positive result, and micro: bits quickly became known and started to be used in teaching in other countries.
Micro: bit is basically a programmable microcomputer that contains a display, 2 buttons, motion, tilt, temperature and antenna sensors. You can even connect other sensors and other components to the micro: bit such as: LED strips, motors, pumps, motion sensors and more. This makes the micro: bit ideal for teaching the basics of programming, but it can also be used to teach subjects such as physics, biology and chemistry. It’s quite a good gadget, and it’s worth having at home, because it’s a lot of fun to use.
Our team is truly diverse, as we have folklorists, metalheads, performance athletes, and even colleagues dedicated to educating the next generation of IT professionals. That’s why we approached our colleague Betka Pališinová, who is currently on maternity leave, at the very beginning to see if she wanted to help us. Betka was positive about the whole idea, and we were all very relieved because she helped us a lot with the organization of the whole summer school. Betka, we are glad to have you with us.
In her spare time, Betka works with the non-profit organization Aj Ty v IT, which is dedicated to educating girls in IT, so she also took on the role of an internal tutor, but she was also supplemented by a team of volunteers so that she would not be alone in this. Of course, before the summer school started, the whole team of volunteers had a full day of training so that the summer school was really a school and the CANCOMers took home some knowledge about programming.
Since this is our first year, we decided to start cautiously and this summer the school is one day a week on Wednesdays from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. The lesson content is set up so that it is not necessary to attend every lesson, as we want to involve as many CANCOMers as possible in the school. In addition to Betka, there is the mentioned team of volunteers at each class to help CANCOMers with programming.
The lessons are divided thematically, so one of the lessons deals, for example, with wireless communication, another with the conductivity of different materials and there is even a creative lesson where we will teach the CANCOMers how to build a robot out of paper cups.
At the moment we have completed the first 4 lessons and we are very happy about the interest in the summer school with micro:bit, because the sooner we awaken children’s interest in IT, the greater the chance that they will decide to study and work in this sector.
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