Curro and the future of robotics

In ten years’ time, your children will be working in fields not yet imagined.

This is what robotics and mathematics teacher at Curro Mount Richmore, Ingrid Hoffman, had to say when asked what the job potential of studying robotics could mean for parents curious about sending their children to the school.

As one of the first schools offering robotics on the North Coast, Curro starts teaching their learners robotics from as early as Castle right up to Grade 6, allowing for in-house Club up to Matric.

With Mrs Hoffman at the helm, learners can look forward to a fun, creative and highly interactive classroom while learning exactly how to not only build robots, but program them as well.

Serving as part of the Natural Science curriculum at Curro, robotics is all about the six Cs, says Mrs Hoffman, highlighting that in order to build a functioning robot, choice of conduct, collaboration, communication, community building, content creation and creativity is required.

“It requires a tonne of team work, and that’s what we enjoy at Curro,” says Mrs Hoffman.

While the programming phase of robotics – coupled with building – only starts to be taught from grade two, our younger classes are taught how to study shapes and sizes of building blocks with the use of Soft Bricks in the Castle and Lego in the Foundation phase.

This greatly contributes to learners in advanced grades being able to better design and build robots.

Parents considering sending their child to Curro may wonder how robotics could benefit their child, but after seeing firsthand how the classroom functions, it is easy to understand how building and programming a robot using something as simple as Lego has real-world job opportunities, even in current job opportunities – mechanical engineering and astrophysics for example – and fields yet to be thought of.

“Robotics and coding go hand-in-hand. Neither can work physically without the other. Imagine a car on cruise control going up a hill, it would have to compensate in power going up-hill to maintain the same speed, and once going downhill, apply brakes while maintaining the same speed,” says Mrs Hoffman, explaining coding in simpler terms.

Curro also participates in the World Robotics Olympiad (WRO) of which Mrs Hoffman just so happens to be an international judge.

Geeking out for a moment, Mrs Hoffman adds that she managed to go from provincial judge, through to national and then international judge all within one year.

Curro partakes annually in projects from WRO in which learners have to solve complex robotics problems – learners also compete both provincially and nationally.

Learners break up into teams of two – of their choosing – of which one member is a coder, and one a builder.

Through teamwork, learners design, build and program robots capable of lifting blocks measuring in at different weight and size.

This means that their robot’s design has to be able to compensate for weight, size, speed – with and without carrying blocks – all while having to avoid obstacles such as walls.

Programs used include Lego Mindstorms EV3 and WeDo 2.0 – and don’t even think for a moment these are simple Lego blocks.

Mrs Hoffman found her passion in robotics and mathematics, while also sporting an honors in psychology.

Curro are one of the first schools in Africa to use the Virtual Robotics Toolkit, allowing for the learners to be able to test their coding virtually before applying to their physical Robot.

For more information, contact Curro Mount Richmore at 087 285 1671.

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