As technology and science advances at a brisk pace, tremendous pressure builds on classrooms to integrate English, robotics, science and XXI century skills, such as adaptability, initiative, and collaboration.
Some extreme critics believe the entire education system needs to be completely revamped,others believe adding robotics into the curriculum can be a manageable first-step toward teaching students forms while practicing XXI century skills in exciting and effective ways.
In the past, literacy has focused on the ability to read,write and communicate with others. Today, literacy is much broader. We think that our project would be (according toCouncil of Teachers of English, 21century literacy means)able to:
- Develop proficiency and fluency with the tools of technology;
- Build intentional cross-cultural connections and relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and strengthen independent thought;
- Design and share information for global communities to meet a variety of purposes;
- Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneous information;
- Create,critique,analyze,and evaluate multimedia texts;
- Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by these complex environments.
These computational and critical thinking, creativity and dispositions skills are the ones we need to be developing in students in a world that has so much to do with computer science and technology.
Young children are natural engineers. They love sand castles, blocks, fairy houses, and other projects that support their creative, fantasy play. We want to support this natural engineering instinct in our project by creating and constructing with Robotics incorporated in Science lessons.
We know that typically, teachers have great difficulty thinking of ways to incorporate these skills into their stringent curriculums. Robotics gives them the opportunity to introduce these topics in ways that meet their required classroom requirements, while helping students develop XXI century skills with creative liberties. During the project we want to create possibilities for students to expose to real-life working situations that can be challenging in many ways, yet the open-ended problems that robotics pose allow them to participate in successful teamwork. Integration of CLIL and Robotics provides high interest, motivation and deep learning experience for students. Robotics encourages kids to think creatively, analyze situations and apply critical thinking and problem solving skills to real world problems. We think that teachers will inrease their knowledge on integration matter.
Our puspose is that every project theme, activities would be analyzed, connecting it with kids needs and practical use. We want to change teachers’ point of view on teaching and education through integration model while seeking new innovative possibilities that motivates and engages kids. We think that motivated students and teachers are our project’s success criteria.
