Media

IN 2017 Rick Alexanderson a technology teacher at St Peter High School encouraged a small grassroots volunteer group of teachers to create a robot for students by students.  Students are empowered to learn where they want, when they want, and how they want. Curriculum that is easy to follow was developed with clear steps and built on leading-edge learning theory designed to reach at-risk youth and to be accessible to the entire student populations.  (At risk means not having access to 21st century skills)

Our goal is to deliver a coding robot learning kit or two or three depending on the generosity of the sponsors, to every school learning common or library in Ottawa.

There is no cost to the student or school. Students will now be able to choose and learn at the time and place of their choice, and will not be restricted to a date and time in a given class. Teachers are also encouraged to book the Coding robotic learning kit out and use it in class. Parents can be engaged when the student books out the kit.

In 2017, we provided access to low-cost robotic hardware, supported by donations from our suppliers and to the kind help of our volunteers to create this coding robot.

The kit comes with state-of-the-art cloud support from our sponsors. In addition, our not-for-profit partners will host the national coding robotic challenge so all students can enter the competition online. This will be the first virtual, 24/7 competition, aimed at finding and celebrating the best practices in coding and robotics.

Once all of the kits are in the schools, the initiative goes into the virtual community with blogs, support groups, and the empowerment of our partners to develop collaborations that encourage future robotic involvement.

In summary we are “pay-it-forward 21st Century skills initiative” that wants to give every student access to coding and robotics.