The idea comes from our cooperating high-tech companies and municipality Smallingerland and province Fryslân support with money. Together we hope that children will become enthusiastic and later choose a technical education.
,’Who has a robot at home?’ asks Alderman Roel Haverkort (Smallingerland) to the children as they stand around the EDU robot. Fingers shoot into the air. ’’We have a lawnmower robot.’’ ’’And I have a toy robot, but it's smaller than this one and can't do much either.'' Haverkort tells the children how important technology is, for example, in making clean energy and getting smarter computers and using robots in industry and healthcare. ''And if more and more robots are coming, there must also be enough people who can program these robots and work with them. That's why I hope you will like engineering so much that you will later choose a technical profession.''
packing machine
When it comes to technology, the children get their money's worth today. They get to work themselves with a large industrial robot, a fully automatic packing machine from the high-tech company Neopost in Drachten. Our packing machine, the CVP-500, can pack 500 packages per hour. It doesn't matter if they are large or small, each package gets its own package that fits exactly,’’ explains Piet Fellinger of Nepost. After a brief explanation, the children line up, ready to place the boxes with the robots on the belt and press the button. At the end of the belt, they take off the packed robot, put a special shipping sticker on it and place the box on pallet. Ready for shipping.
Robot in class
Assembling the robot may be a fun activity at school, but the question, of course, is how the robot can help the children in class. ’’That is why we are working on a follow-up to the teaching package that comes with the robot,’’ says project leader Bas de Nooijer of Innovatiecluster Drachten. ''Of course it would be great if you could learn foreign languages with the help of this robot. Or do homework together. It is all part of the possibilities. Schools will soon be able to choose for themselves how to use the robot in their teaching program.
Primary schools in the municipalities of Smallingerland, Opsterland and Oost- en Weststellingwerf can expect the robot from Thursday 7 September. The rest of the primary schools will be equipped with their robot later this month.
EDU Robotics
415 elementary school in Fryslân will receive a robot that children can assemble themselves and control and program using an Arduino ‘heart’ processor. Each school will receive a teaching package with it. A support program for the lessons is currently being worked on with vocational education in Fryslân. In addition, a working group has started to give the EDU robot a permanent place in the learning line ‘Computational Thinking’. In two shifts in 2017, the robots will be distributed to all Frisian elementary schools until all schools have their own EDU robot. In early 2018, a big celebration event will be organized to bring all schools together with their EDU robots. Here the children can show what they have learned their own robot. Check out EDU Robotics For more information.