Robots in a Dutch school: from the basics of coding to driving robots

Publication date: August 6, 2014

RoboMind Academy is an online educator-friendly platform that can be used with students aged 8 years or older. By programming a virtual robot, students are introduced to logic, automation and technology. A primary school in the Netherlands (5th grade class of “De Achtsprong”, De Lier, the Netherlands) has recently been featured on the local news for their work with RoboMind and actual robots!

The RoboMind team taught coding using RoboMind for 3 years in a row. The students started when they were still in the 3rd grade (9 years old). The whole class followed RoboMind lessons that are now also available in the RoboMind Academy. This year, they turned to programming real robots (Lego NXT). The challenge was to see if they could apply their programming skills and problem solving knowledge, as learned in the previous years with RoboMind, to this new context.

Again it turned out that virtually the whole class could do this without any problem. During the final lesson, they had to program their robot (one robot for each group of four pupils) to find the end of a white line as fast as possible. Watch the video to see the results of their work!

If you’re interested in including robots in your coding lessons, don’t forget to also check out European Robotics Week, which will be taking place from 24 to 30 November 2014.