It starts with a game of Robot Turtles, a board game by Thinkfun that’s being used at Hubbard Woods School in Winnetka, Ill., to teach kindergarteners the basics of coding.
“It helps explain the step-by-step nature of coding,” says Todd Burleson, resource center director for this Winnetka Public Schools District 36 elementary school. The game serves as an on-ramp for students, introducing technology into their educational journeys. Within HWS and District 36’s other four schools, this is the first step of a journey that will touch on coding and robotics at each grade level.
While this exposure to robotics has been eye-opening to some parents of children at the school, it is right in line with the Horizon Report: 2017 K-12 Edition put out by the New Media Consortium and Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) last year. Robotics was identified as a key technology development…
