This is great for kids and budding programmers …
STEM has a bit of an image problem: Despite efforts to make it colorful and friendly, it’s still intimidating to a lot of students. When there are parents shoving electronics kits at them while offering no help and teachers insisting that learning to code is fundamental to their career prospects, some kids end up completely turned off. But now Lego Education has a $330 kit, Spike Prime, aimed at building coding literacy and overcoming the confidence problem that drives many kids away from STEM before they reach high school.
Instead of pointing students toward more complex projects, Spike Prime is about basic knowledge and practicality. As Esben Stærk Jørgensen, the president of Lego Education, said during a press event in New York today, Spike Prime is not about learning to code so much as it is coding to learn.
Along those lines, the 33 initial projects that kids can undertake focus on practical concerns. Sure, there’s a robot that breakdances, but the point is to get you up and going with your own crazy moves in response as part of a general wellness program, like the Apple Watch’s insistence on standing up. There’s even an entire section called “Life Hacks” that features projects like a robot that responds to the weather in a given location, displaying a frown and flipping up an umbrella face when it’s raining. If it’s sunny, the robot can put on a pair of little sunglasses instead.
Source: Engadget
