AIS: After-school Coding, Robotics & Design program

Create Lab’s core introductory program developed with academics from Oxford, MIT & Singapore’s top universities will help lay the foundation for students to become powerful Computational Thinkers. Using concepts of coding, robotics & design, students are encouraged to become problem solvers and creators. Students will code their own computer games & digital art, program robots and develop hardware that will progressively enhance their thinking skills and help them excel in school and at home

At the end of the program, students would be able to:

• Develop a foundation in Computational Thinking – a powerful thinking process that enhances cognitive abilities
• Develop 21st Century skills in critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration
• Understand and appreciate the basic concepts of computing, including algorithms, sequences, loops, conditionals, variables etc.
• Develop computer programs and hardware for simple games, digital stories and learning tools using concepts of design and innovation

Course Summary
Students will be progressively introduced to the fundamentals of design and innovation including empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping and testing through fun and gamified learning approaches

The course borrows from Prof. Seymour Papert’s constructionist learning theory and the work of MIT Media Lab and Prof. Ken Kahn’s technology enhanced learning theory along with Key Stages 1-3 of the British Computing Programs of Study

Students will be encouraged to explore in a self-paced, “learning by doing” facilitative environment where they will learn to relate design and innovation to key computational concepts including abstraction, variables, loops, and conditionals. Through activities such as role-playing, story-telling, art and music, along with state-of-the-art software and hardware from MIT and Google, students will be challenged to solve simple everyday problems by developing their own computer programs and hardware. Students will be able to share all their output with their families and friends as well as continue to engage and build upon their learning through free to use, cloud based tools

Materials Provided
All Create Lab learning resources, tablet and laptop computers, Dash robots, micro-controllers and other technology tools will be provided

Instructors
Our instructors are very well experienced. All members go through extensive training under the Create Lab Method for curriculum, pedagogy and classroom management by our team in Singapore. Student to instructor will be kept at a maximum of 5:1, to facilitate personalized attention

Program Structure (Click here, for more details)
The Program runs for 20 lessons for 2 hours each. Lessons will be held once a week, during term time. Upon completion students will have the option of enrolling in progressively advanced modules

FAQ

1. What do you teach and why is it important?
We empower primary school children to create with technology through computer programming (coding), robotics and design thinking. Children today use technology mostly to play games or watch videos. We want them to use it to make things and to express themselves. 65% of primary schoolers will do jobs that are not invented yet because of technological change. We must prepare them for this future

2. Are you a Scratch class?
The focus of our program is empowering 21st Century Skills: Creativity, Critical Thinking, Communication & Collaboration. We use Scratch as a platform for this, along with Dash Robot, Makey Makey etc. To use an analogy, rather than purely teaching students how to use Word or Excel (which is a technical skill that may become obsolete), we focus on inspiring students to use these tools to write poetry or tell stories (which encourages them to think and become creative)

3. Do the students assemble kits?
No, we don’t use kits. Our programs are largely open ended where the students learn at their own pace and create using their own imagination. The program is designed so that the knowledge gained in in class can be applied anywhere to create, imagine and continue learning through freely accessible online tools. There’s no need to buy expensive kits or software

4. What is Introduction to Computational Thinking (ICT101)?
This is our foundation course which is designed to excite students to create with technology and lose their fear of technical subjects such as coding and design. The course is designed to appeal both to girls and boys. We do this by not setting a defined end output – such as developing a shooting game or a racing game – as this will appeal only to some students, and not others. Instead, we guide the students to come up with their own ideas for expressions and work with them to develop the required thinking and technical skills to achieve these ideas. At the end of the program, a student will be able to confidently build simple computer games, digital stories or a digital art expressions

5. What’s next after completing ICT101?
Once a student has a solid creative and technical foundation through ICT101, there are many progressively advanced programs to choose from. The immediate progression is ICT102 where students will delve deeper in to the fundamental concepts they have learned and also experience simple App development. They will then progress on to advanced App development, Minecraft modding with JavaScript, advanced robotics, programming in Python, web development and many others. Create Lab will be progressively introducing these programs in Sri Lanka. Ultimately, students will have at least 4 years’ worth of programs to choose from and continue their creative journey

6. How big are your classes?
Our curated learning experience allow a maximum 10 students per class with a 1-to-5 teacher-student ratio

7. My child has learning differences/ special needs. I’m worried he/she will not be able to take part?
At least 20% of Create Lab’s student population has learning differences. So please don’t worry! Because our programs are designed with individual creativity in mind and our class sizes are small (1 teacher to 5 students maximum), we are able to give a significant amount of personalised attention to each child. Also for many students with learning differences, the technical aspects of coding and robotics provide them with an outlet that traditional subjects cannot. We have seen many such students thrive in our environment

8. Who develops your programs?
All our programs are developed together with academics from Oxford, MIT, National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Singapore University of Technology (SUTD). Our Academic Board has over 85 years of pioneering technology experience, given TED talks, and hold patents in areas such as artificial intelligence & technology enabled learning

Start Date

August 31, 2017
1:15PM – 3:15PM

Age Group

08 – 13 Years

Please contact School to register!

You can also contact Create Lab at 011 2 599479, for any questions