For several years, My School Ticino Extracurricular Service has been running coding and robotics courses for children aged 5 and up. Through structured play and fascinating robotics, the children’s interest in activity and discovery is aroused and ignited, peer-to-peer discussion and collaboration is stimulated and the foundations for developing solid digital skills are created. In addition to fostering logical-scientific development, coding also encourages the child’s curiosity towards the process rather than the result, acting as a strongly educational tool.
The big news this year is the collaboration that My School Ticino has forged with ATED, Associazione Ticinese Evoluzione Digitale. After discussions with ATED’s experts on the design of our new STEM and computer classroom, we have now embarked on an exciting and unique adventure: this year, My School Ticino will present its young team at the FIRST® LEGO® League, an international robotics challenge held every year all over the world. The children taking part meet once a week after school here in our STEM room to train and prepare, followed by Alessandra Lietti, our educator specialised in robotics and coding, and by Mentor Corrado Corsale, former coach of the Smilebots, the Ticino team that triumphed in Long Beach (California) last spring. Preparation for the FIRST® LEGO® League involves, on one hand, the design and construction, exclusively with LEGO® pieces, of autonomous robots that are capable of carrying out a certain number of set missions; on the other hand, it consists of creating and presenting a research project aimed at finding innovative solutions to topics of real interest. The well-known competition has goals similar to ours: to stimulate in children and young people the ability to work in a team, to create new ways of learning through experimentation, to approach competitiveness in a constructive and playful way, and to increase self-confidence.
We would like to mention here that ATED has launched ated4special, a project that includes a series of initiatives and meetings, with the aim of putting technology at the service of the most fragile people. For more information and to support this invaluable service: Practical solutions for people with autism | ated4special