YMCA Ga-Rankuwa partnered with Fundabotix and Flying Labs South Africa to host a workshop aimed at teaching grade 7 and 8 learners about coding and robotics this past Saturday.
“Today is just a workshop which is hopefully part of a bigger picture. If this pilot succeeds we plan to host workshops in other communities and hopefully get a partner who will sponsor us to do this on a national scale,” said Simon Mitshabi, an organiser and YMCA Ga-Rankuwa board member.
Mitshabi said they ran a campaign over the past few weeks to make learners aware about the workshop. They then proceeded to choose ten learners from in and around Ga-Rankuwa. He said they targeted grade 7 and 8 learners because they were literate enough to understand the programme and syllabus.
“When we officially roll out the programme, we intend for it to be for all grades. We do have programs suited for learners as young as grade R but that would need more than one day to achieve. We do plan to this sometime in the future,” said Mitshabi.
The learners spent half of the day learning simple coding functions. They spent the rest of the day learning how to use the code they learnt to command the robots.
“As Fundabotix we are driven by the wish to see young learners be part of and compete in the digital era. Our mission is to expose learners to robotics and everything digital because it is already there for them to utilise,” said Ntombikayise Banda, founder of Fundabotix.
Banda said they aimed to trigger an interest in learners to follow careers in e-STEAM (Entrepreneurship, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics).
“We’re focusing on this specific age group and grades because they haven’t chosen the subject they wish to focus on yet. We’re hoping to spark an interest in them to follow careers in this field before they have to choose their subjects in grade 10,” said Banda.
“We use block-based programming because we want to teach logical thinking and computing thinking skills. We want them to learn how to create algorithms, basically coming up with the best way of solving a problem. Once they understand the concept of creating the best algorithms, then they can get introduced to text-based programming languages,” she said.
Queen Ndlovu, of Flying Labs South Africa, said they were to empower young people through the e-STEAM programme.
“It is regrettable that most of our learners are not exposed to the world of robotics and even technology. This is our humble attempt to reach out to the local communities and our young people to get more exposure into the robotics world because there are opportunities available to them,” she said.
Do you have more information about the story?
Please send us an email to editorial@rekord.co.za or phone us on 083 625 4114.
For free breaking and community news, visit Rekord’s websites: Rekord East
For more news and interesting articles, like Rekord on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or Instagram
