Following the success of last year, Curro Mount Richmore once again hosted their popular national Robotics competition in association with Hands on Technologies (HOT) and Play and Build Toys.
The KwaZulu-Natal leg of the challenge took place at the school on Friday, July 24 with 32 Curro pupils from across the province participating.
This included two visiting pupils from Curro Embury College in Berea, Yushay Ramlahl and Menan Pillay, who walked away as the overall winners of the day.
Their robot named “Yumenator” completed all the obstacles with precision.
Five years ago it was considered adequate for pupils to be computer literate, which meant they simply needed to know how to use a computer.
The fast pace of digital means that this is no longer sufficient and children now need to know how computers work, including how to write computer code.
With this need in mind, the Curro Centre for Educational Excellence (CCEE) is constantly improving the teaching and learning methods in the fields of literacy, mathematics, science, technology and coding in the form of robotics.
Robotics has been available as a subject from grades R – 6 at Curro schools since 2011.
“The Robotics Competitions encourage Curro learners to explore the world of coding in a fun, rewarding way,” said Dalene Gelderblom, a robotics subject expert at CCEE.
“It provides an engaging, interactive learning platform that creates a buzz of excitement in our schools.”
On the day, participating teams arrived prepared with their pre-built basic robot as well as a clear understanding of the problem they had to solve and their programme to solve it.
The children wrote their programmes before the competition, but were not allowed to store it on their robots as it had to be rewritten on the day at the competition venue.
During the competition they could add sensors or attachments if required and points were allocated for the robots’ ability to complete various challenges.
The Curro Robotics competition was open to Curro pupils in grades four to six, who competed in pairs.
The winners, who made up the first three teams won incredible Lego sets.
These educational prizes were sponsored by Hands on Technologies (HOT) and Play and Build Toys.
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