“ How Lego Education tries to encourage kids into Stem through play-based learning

Lego Education, the more serious branch of the Lego enterprise, aims to provide teachers and other education providers with fun ways to engage children with science, technology, engineering and maths (Stem) subjects.

Lego Mindstorms
Catrine Bjerrehus, associate marketing manager for Lego MINDSTORMS at Lego Education, admitted to feeling out of her depth when she first joined the Lego world.

To try and ease teachers into being more accepting of using Lego to support the curriculum in the classroom, there are resources available including cards with suggestions on how teachers can guide a lesson.

All of the Lego Education sets designed for Primary and Secondary level education also come with a free downloadable guide which includes resources aligned with the curriculum to help teachers with building instructions and classroom tasks.

...Lego Mindstorms..., a type of technology aimed at students in secondary education (aged 10 years and above) that allows pupils to build and programme robots…

… these technologies can be used for “all sorts of Steam lessons” to help students to understand these basic concepts whilst making these discoveries for themselves – again putting the emphasis on actively participating in classroom learning…

Lego for pre-school

Helping children to make discoveries on their own through assisted play can be slightly more delicate for younger children, so for pre-school stage children aged three and up, Lego Education recommends LEGO Education STEAM Park sets.

Children are challenged to use the pieces to build a theme park, and asked what will happen when particular pieces are used together.

This introduces concepts such as balance, centrifugal force, pivots, and other mathematical and scientific theories that will keep occurring throughout their education.

Rikke Baunbæk Wallington, senior concept and design lead for preschool, at Lego Education said she uses these in pre-school lessons filled with 40 children every day, and assured me can contribute to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) learning standards followed by all Ofsted-registered schools or early years providers in the UK.

Robots, teachers and future jobs

When moving on to primary learning, the recommended Lego kit for supporting classroom learning is the WeDo 2.0, a kit that pairs with the WeDo 2.0 software application to allow children to develop moving robotics…”

…Developing the ability to think outside of the box, something Lego encourages, is important as children in schools now will grow up to have jobs that do not currently exist…”

For the full article go to: http://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Inspect-a-Gadget/How-Lego-Education-tries-to-encourage-kids-into-Stem-through-play-based-learning