I got an invitation to visit Prof. Erkki Sutinen who is steering University of Turku’s overseas campus in Windhoek. This was a good opportunity to explore the possibilities for Contextualized Learning Solutions to get involved in projects also in Namibia. Prof. Erkki and the campus coordinator Lannie Uwu-khaeb shares our passion for introducing youth to coding and robotics and seeing what kind of exciting opportunities that can open for youth. Namibia and South Africa has a lot in common and there is plenty that we can learn from each other.
To kick off the visit we had a robotics workshop with a group of primary students from Alludio Academy. During the three hour workshop students got an introduction to the Micro:Bit controlled Maqueen robot. Despite the students not having previously worked with the Micro:bit, the students were fast in grasping the basics and it didn’t take many minutes before they were writing their own programs where they were exploring the features of the Micro:bit. It was amazing to see how fast the students were able to progress and how little guidance they needed to figure things out. By the end of the session the students had programmed their Maqueen robots to move around, avoid obstacles, play tunes and react to sounds. The session was held with very limited instruction and with a large portion of exploration. Peer learning was taking place and the students supported each other to figure out new features.
It will be interesting to see what this group of talented student will be able to come up with given a bit more time to work with robotics and explore their own ideas.
Another exciting activity during my visit will be to travel up to Opuwo to meet with a group of ‘Street Engineers’ that are making toy cars. University of Turku is working with them to start making smarter toy cars and to explore the possibilities for them to expand their markets and increase their profitability. The project includes providing training and having researchers co-designing toy cars with the street engineers. I am sure this will be a very educational visit for me where I hope to be able to also have some positive contributions towards the process.
Marcus Duveskog
Contextualized Learning Solutions NPC
