KinderLab Robotics Donates Robot Kits to Connect Schools in Pennsylvania and Guatemala
Waltham, MA — KinderLab Robotics now announced that it has donated 4 KIBO robot kits to La Puerta Abierta, a university in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. Element of a partnership with Sewickley Academy, near Pittsburgh, PA, this donation will foster cross-cultural collaboration involving the educational facilities. Sewickley’s 5th-graders, who have working experience teaching youthful pupils about robotics by way of the school’s Significant Buddies program, will give steerage to La Puerta Abierta’s 1st-graders as they get the job done on enjoyable, hands-on programming troubles.
La Puerta Abierta, which relies closely on volunteers and donations, was co-launched by Amanda Flayer, who was a Peace Corps volunteer with Michelle Bonham, a Lower Faculty Spanish teacher at Sewickley Academy. The two schools have earlier collaborated by possessing their 5th-graders produce a bilingual book together. When La Puerta Abierta secured arithmetic professor and information analyst Gaspar Yataz Pop as a volunteer to educate robotics making use of KIBO, the concept for the STEAM-powered collaboration concerning the schools’ pupils was born.
“We seem forward to offering our elementary college college students the chance to have interaction with one more tradition,” mentioned Beau Blaser, director of technological innovation at Sewickley Academy. “Through coding and collaboration, they’ll be mastering to connect concepts and ideas collectively from a terrific distance. That can guide to an appreciation of the unique cultures, but also a realization that there’s a large amount of commonality throughout the human expertise. What greater way to do that than with some of our youngest learners? They’ll see that any one can come to be an engineer or categorical their artistic ability—you can be everything you want to be in this entire world, whether you’re from Guatemala or Sewickley, Pennsylvania.”
Because Guatemala has sporadic wi-fi accessibility, Sewickley Academy chose the screen-totally free KIBO as the fingers-on coding robotic to share with La Puerta Abierta’s young pupils. Sewickley Academy’s laptop science teacher Julia Tebbets and Bonham will present Pop skilled development on KIBO by way of Zoom or Google Meet. College students in Sewickley and Santiago Atitlán will then collaborate on programming tasks beginning in early 2023. According to Tebbets, a single original concept is for college students to program their KIBOs to do dances that mirror every lifestyle.
“We are delighted to assistance this cross-cultural collaboration,” reported Mitch Rosenberg, CEO of KinderLab Robotics Inc. “As KinderLab co-founder Marina Bers shows in her ebook Past Coding : How Children Find out Values Via Programming, KIBO’s screen-free of charge, block-based mostly programming program connects learners who converse different languages and appear from diverse cultures. Doing work jointly to provide their robots to daily life in pleasurable STEAM projects will display the students in The usa and Guatemala how the ability of collaboration—like the ability of STEAM thinking—transcends all borders.”
About KIBO – The Playful STEAM Robot
KIBO is a robotic kit that will allow children aged 4–10 to construct, plan, decorate, and bring their personal robot to daily life without the need of demanding any monitor time on a smartphone, tablet, or personal computer. With artwork and building, learners remodel KIBO into imagined animals, autos, storybook figures, and a lot more. When little ones produce their personal robotic, they understand it as engage in, but they are studying invaluable STEAM techniques. Not only are these fingers-on activities inherently worthwhile, but they aid youngsters recognize the technological innovation in their globe and can even increase their long run position prospective buyers.
About KinderLab Robotics
KinderLab Robotics is the creator of the award-profitable KIBO, a playful, educational STEAM robotic kit dependent on 20+ several years of baby enhancement investigation with 1000’s of youngsters, lecturers, and mother and father. Made precisely for lecturers by Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers at Boston School, KIBO is presently employed in 70+ nations around the world and has established efficacy in helping youngsters find out STEAM—and obtaining them energized about it! KinderLab features a entire suite of educating materials that assistance combine STEAM things into a wide array of curricula, which includes artwork, cultural studies, and studying literacy.
For extra info, make sure you stop by KinderLabRobotics.com.