Recently, The National Museum of Computing was buzzing with excitement as they hosted a vibrant and engaging STEM Day
The STEM Day, was a celebration of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, designed to inspire and educate students through a mix of hands on and theory learning, providing an opportunity for some outside school classroom learning.
The students were of diverse backgrounds, some from a local primary school and some home-schooled. They were divided into 4 groups, 2 primary school and 2 home schooled groups, each carrying out the different activities/classrooms.
The day started with tours of the Museum, learning about computers thoughout the ages, such as the Colossus computer and so much more. Small classrooms had been prepared for the lessons, which included information on modern AI, robotics and coding. The RAF Brize Norton STEM team facilitated the coding lessons, where Sphero bolt robots were used, which are little gyroscopic robots that roll around and can be programmed to follow a drawn line or programmed to carry out other specified actions. These robots even had LED panels in their bodies that could also be programmed.
Sphero bolts use block code, which is a great introduction to coding. We taught the children how to code using an app on tablets, which they used to tell their robots to move. Block code is a beginner-friendly way to learn programming using visual blocks instead of text-based code, where they could drag and drop blocks to create animations, games, and simple programs.
To finish the lessons we would play a few quick games with the robots such as musical chairs, football and a race around a mini track. After doing these lessons with all 4 groups we then packed up and before leaving received a thank you from the staff and families for helping make STEM Day a success.
