At My School Ticino we have always been committed to the issues of digital citizenship and technological competence of our students. In the Elementary School programme, the children attend the Digital Technology Laboratory for an hour and a half a week, where they work according to skills, with differentiated programmes: the first grade works with the tablet, focusing on drawing and processing digital images; for the second grade, there is an introduction to the use of the PC, with a number of activities related to computer programming languages; the third grade participates in the Lego League in the Explorer version, for team work within the class group, with limited competitiveness; the fourth and fifth grades, by linking up with the Mountain School week, use the PC for a work on digital cartography. The fourth grade, as every year, is also responsible for the management of the school library, and through the tablet provides the loans and returns service.
For several years, our My School extracurricular service – My Extra School has been running coding and robotics courses for children aged 5 and up. Through structured play and fascinating robotics, the children’s interest in activity and discovery is aroused and ignited, peer-to-peer discussion and collaboration is stimulated, and the foundations for developing solid digital skills are created. In addition to fostering logical-scientific development, coding also encourages the child’s curiosity towards the process rather than the result, acting as a strongly educational tool.
The big news this year is the collaboration that My School Ticino has forged with ATED, Associazione Ticinese Evoluzione Digitale.
After discussions with ATED’s experts on the design of our new STEM and computer classroom, we have now embarked on an exciting and unique adventure: this year, My School Ticino will present its young team at the FIRST® LEGO® League, an international robotics challenge held every year all over the world. The children taking part meet once a week after school here in our STEM room to train and prepare, followed by Alessandra Lietti, our educator specialised in robotics and coding, and by Mentor Corrado Corsale, former coach of the Smilebots, the Ticino team that triumphed in Long Beach (California) last spring.
Preparation for the FIRST® LEGO® League involves, on one hand, the design and construction, exclusively with Lego pieces, of autonomous robots that are capable of carrying out a certain number of set missions; on the other hand, it consists of creating and presenting a research project aimed at finding innovative solutions to topics of real interest.
The well-known competition has goals similar to ours: to stimulate in children and young people the ability to work in a team, to create new ways of learning through experimentation, to approach competitiveness in a constructive and playful way, and to increase self-confidence.
Read more Cover Page – FIRST LEGO League
We would like to mention here that ATED, among other projects, has launched ated4special, a project that includes a series of initiatives and meetings, with the aim of putting technology at the service of the most fragile people. For more information: Practical solutions for people with autism | ated4special
