Enjoying on-site training 👍🏻
During this school year we are providing in-service training for teachers in various cities across Eastern Finland. The training program aims to train and support teachers to implement multidisciplinary robotics projects with Lego EV3 equipment. The content is targeted for students in grades 6-9. Contents of the training program correspond to the latest descriptions of programming education as published by the National audiovisual institute KAVI and the National Agency for Education.
Lego EV3 robots can be programmed with Scratch. One creative teacher team deviced a fat detector!
Training contents
Two afternoon workshops cover the pedagogical basics of hands-on project implementation. The connections to the requirements of the national curriculum lay the base. Participating teachers play around with sensors and motors to learn by doing.
Some teachers plan their classroom project to be a robotics-focused Escape Room game where EV3 devices are controlled using the EV3 Classroom app (which now looks a lot like Scratch). Others opt for a more multimedia-focused way of controlling the EV3 robots. This approach allows building science exhibition type simulators that users can control with Lego EV3s.
All teachers will run a course for their students early 2022. We will report student feedback and showcase their robotics inventions later!
Participant feedback
Due to evaluations and other end-of-semester hassle, the timing of the training in December was challenging. How did the participating teachers comment the training?
Teija, a 6th grade teacher at Pyhtää Huutjärvi School, had some previous experience in programming with Scratch and micro:bit, but she wasn’t familiar with EV3s. Teija wished to gain EV3 skills. “This was such a good start and a no-nonsense training! Together we opened the EV3 pack, got familiar with the components and started experimenting. I really liked the practical approach.” Huutjärvi School intends to utilise EV3 robots in classroom projects at the beginning of the spring semester.
Markus, a mathematics teacher at Pappilansalmi School, agrees with Teija. “The training wasn’t high-level daydreaming type of a deal, but after a clear motivational start we worked with the robots hands-on. There were clear guidelines from the trainer and the opportunity to get tutoring online.” Pappilansalmi school is planning a pupil-based coding day for the entire upper secondary school, using Code School Finland’s learning materials. More on that later!
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