Now, the floor is supplied with small, programmable robots called Blue-Bots, which the children can control and programme from a tablet via Bluetooth. And this makes their play much more interactive, according to Sara Petrat-Melin, who works at Dokk1 and offers digital technology services to schools, kindergartens and nurseries. 

In August, people were invited to try out a prototype of a WizeFloor game developed for the small robots during the “Wild Robots” festival held at Dokk1. 

“Blue-Bots provide really good opportunities for play, and when combined with the interactive trails on WizeFloor, you can easily create new trails or modify existing ones. We have also discussed the possibility of children creating their own trails, like a treasure map, which we can incorporate into WizeFloor.” 

“It provides an excellent starting point for storytelling. The robot leaves traces behind as it moves along the track and if it hits a bomb, it explodes and children find this kind of interactivity fun. It motivates them to perform the right programming,” Sara Petrat-Melin explains. 

The development of WizeFloor and its integration with the small robots is carried out by the Alexandra Institute. According to Kaspar Rosengreen Nielsen, Principal Software Architect at the Alexandra Institute, the idea has been to explore how to engage children in some kind of programming. 

“It’s an idea we’ve wanted to explore for a long time, and now the opportunity arose to collaborate with Dokk1 and Aarhus University. We went to Dokk1 on a Thursday when they have an open workshop called Digital Play, in which children can come and play with the robots. Here, we tested the prototype and improved it continually,” he says.

“I tell it what to do”

The collaboration between Dokk1 and the Alexandra Institute was established through Ole Caprani, Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University. He has extensive experience working with robots and is also involved in the development of digital activities for children at Dokk1

“There was a girl who once said, ‘By programming the robot, I tell it what to do.’ That is a very precise description by a girl from the 3rd grade.” 

According to Ole Caprani, this is exactly the scope of programmable technology. You can program a robot to do something on its own. It is not as easy to understand if you are playing a video game. But it becomes very clear to children when they have a physical robot that they have programmed to perform actions on its own. 

“When you are 3-4 years old, programming is a difficult concept to understand. But when we have visited kindergartens, and children have held these Blue-Bots, we see how they start exploring what it is and how it becomes concrete for them that the robot follows a specific route when they press forward, forward, turn, turn.” 

“There is a connection between what they press and how the robot reacts, and this makes the children realize that they can give orders to devices such as a washing machine or a toaster as well.” 

About Digital Play at Dokk1

On Thursdays from 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm, the Main Library, Dokk1 invites to Digital Play. Here, there is an opportunity to explore various digital technologies.

However, you can always find the popular LEGO Spike Essential set and build and program LEGO models. They also get regular visits from the robots Blue-Bot and Glow and Go Bot, which can be easily programmed by younger children.

Dokk1 provides inspiration, materials, and guidance each time and hope that many children and adults want to come and play.

The post Small, programmable robots inspire interactive play and encourage children to programme appeared first on WizeFloor.

To develop an app is mainly reserved for people with a background in information technology – or at least just for adults. But this is not the case at the school, where pupils from the fifth grade have successfully developed an app for the daycare children’s WizeFloor.

BOTH OLDER AND YOUNGER CHILDREN ARE GETTING PREPARED FOR A DIGITAL WORLD

The leader of the daycare institutions in Odense (western district), Svend Besser Degn, believes it is a good solution to replace the toy bricks with a screen for a while.

“In the daycare we are focusing on how to prepare the children as best as possible for the society and digitization is vital in this regard,” he says. “They get an understanding that they can use technology for more than just playing – they can actually work with it.”

This new initiative contributes to developing both the daycare children and school children’s digital language.

SCHOOLCHILDREN VISITED THE DAYCARE TO SET THE LEARNING LEVEL

The purpose of the app is to teach the younger children about right and left, colours and animals through movement, games and play. As part of the process, fifth grade students have therefore visited the daycare in order to assess how much the small children actually understand.

“It must be customized to their age. We are used to something a bit more difficult”, the student Maja Lundsgaarde says.

WE WILL REPEAT THE SUCCESS – AND AHEAD OF SCHEDULE

The initiative has been well received, and shouts of excitement from the daycare children while playing prove that the students from the school, Paarup Skole, are on the right track. This makes the student Ida Kruse Haagensen happy.

“I am really proud. It’s great to see the children so happy while playing the game. I am pleased that it is useful for them and that they can learn a lot from the games we have made. They can also use this when starting at school and kindergarten.”

Both the daycare and the school consider the collaboration so successful that they are already planning to do it twice instead of once a year.

Read the news about the collaboration between the children on Danish national television TV2 here.

The post WizeFloor Used by School Children to Develop Apps for Daycare Children appeared first on WizeFloor.