ST actions for kindergarten and first faculties

The venture Narrativa digitale (“Digital storytelling”) was born in 2023, due to the thought of some ST workers (Achille Colombo, Lavinia Fabrello, Luca Proverbio, Ramona Scaramuzzino, and Bruno Zappia), with the help of the colleagues Luisa Fracassini, Antonella Redaelli, and Ornella Tavilla. Its predominant goal is the discount of the digital divide – a aim to which ST has at all times been dedicated via varied varieties of data dissemination and coaching actions:

• The ST Basis is ST’s non-profit company basis that goals to bridge the digital divide via training in communities world wide. It operates in 12 international locations throughout Europe, Asia and Africa and is led by volunteers who design tailored applications for various teams of individuals, together with youngsters, adults, individuals with disabilities and seniors.
• The STEM your approach program goals to encourage the following technology to review science, expertise, engineering, and arithmetic (STEM), thus growing the data and expertise wanted to achieve a technology-driven world. Many ST websites manage or participate at occasions to advertise STEM training and permit younger individuals to discover STEM-related careers. For instance, ST Italy organizes innovation days for college kids in Naples and participates on the Maker Faire in Rome. In Singapore we host secondary college pupils and lecturers to advertise careers in electronics, whereas in France we participate at Extraordinary Manufacturing facility (L’Usine Extraordinaire). STEM Your approach additionally consists of native occasions which are aimed toward participating youthful individuals and join with native communities, together with native faculties.

By these actions ST workers make their expertise and time obtainable, excited by the thought of ​​transmitting their technical and cultural background constructed up throughout the years of labor within the firm. Among the volunteers of Narrativa Digitale have twenty years of expertise in volunteering for ST Basis and this helped them to design the “Storyteller Robotic”  venture for faculties.

Particularly, this exercise goals to introduce coding to major faculties as a part of the broader goal to broaden the attain and viewers of our occasions and instilling a love for expertise and STEM topics even in preschool age.

The thought of ​​making a coaching alternative in major faculties was sparked due to a fortuitous dialog that certainly one of our volunteers had with a trainer from an elementary college in Milan. The aim was to inaugurate the venture in 2024 after which broaden it. The Storyteller Robotic has not solely been used for actions in faculties but in addition throughout an ST occasion held in Monza in October 2024, which was primarily aimed toward major and secondary college college students.

The center of the venture: ST volunteers and younger learners

The trainers who took half within the venture Narrativa Digitale are ST workers (Ramona Scaramuzzino, Luca Proverbio, Lavinia Fabrello, Achille Colombo and Bruno Zappia, Domenico Genova, Laura Bonini) and have a number of years of expertise at school actions. In addition they adopted particular coaching (devoted to a earlier venture – Coding and Studying), which was the results of a collaboration between ST Basis, Università Cattolica and Fondazione ACRA.

Earlier than being launched, the venture was submitted for approval to the educating workers of the beneficiary faculties. At every assembly there have been two trainers and the category educating workers, who already knew the scholars, and gave helpful recommendation on learn how to contain the youngsters within the varied actions. To this point, the members have been 8–9-year-old college students from elementary faculties (two courses from Cornaredo and one from Cerro Maggiore) and 5–6-year-old youngsters from the final 12 months of kindergarten (a category in Cerro Maggiore and one in San Vittore Olona), thus involving multiple hundred youngsters. Extending the viewers a lot was a primary for ST, which earlier than this event had by no means addressed kindergarten youngsters.

A basic requirement of the organized actions is the small measurement of the teams concerned. The exercise is a crew sport, which couldn’t work correctly if there is no such thing as a efficient communication between members. The small variety of teams shaped favored the collaboration and proactive participation of every scholar.

The primary exercise: coding a story

The Storyteller Robotic is a little bit robotic mouse with a button panel on its again and, on this exercise, is programmed by youngsters to maneuver in house and inform a narrative. The mouse doesn’t have a voice, however youngsters lend him one, as he strikes round on a path, from one episode of the story to a different.

This mouse is 10 cm lengthy and may memorize 40 instructions. Particularly, the robotic strikes on an impediment course, with the goal of continuing from level A to level B whereas avoiding obstacles. The “drawback fixing” work is completed on the desk in a gaggle on sheets of paper whereas the verification half is completed on the carpet the place the youngsters take turns to impersonate the robotic. Throughout the exercise, programming sections and subsequent verification of the code are carried out: all the youngsters can attempt to insert the instructions, after having outlined them on paper with their classmates, and see the end result.

Every assembly is characterised by a theoretical introduction given by our volunteers, adopted by the sensible exercise, by which concepts and outcomes are shared. Particularly, the actions are usually structured in 4 classes:

• First Lesson: Coding unplugged

Throughout the first lesson, the aim is to introduce youngsters to the idea of coding with out the usage of digital units, that’s “coding unplugged”. Youngsters be taught to put in writing code on paper that can permit them to carry out a mission and transfer in house. Then a toddler impersonates the robotic and strikes on a modular foam mat: the strikes are primarily based on the directions given by the classmates, who learn the code beforehand written collectively.

• Second Lesson: Programming the Robotic

The “Robotic Minstrel” gadget seems for the primary time. The youngsters obtain recipes for which substances are wanted. These substances are represented in a paper grid on which the mouse will then have to maneuver.

On this case the youngsters write the code collectively on paper after which validate it through the mouse who must transfer and gather all of the substances for the recipe.

 

• Third Lesson: representing a narrative

On this lesson, the ST volunteers are absent, and it’s the class trainer who leads the exercise. The aim is to stimulate creativity and group work via an actual story. The trainer tells a narrative and the youngsters, divided into 6 teams, should produce drawings representing part of the story. Every group produces 2 drawings, for a complete of 12 drawings to then apply on the paper grid that corresponds to 12 phases of the story.

• Fourth Lesson: coding and storytelling

Over the past assembly, ST volunteers return to combine the coding with the story of the earlier lesson.

The youngsters, nonetheless divided into 6 teams, write the code for the 2 phases of the story assigned to them (which correspond to the 2 drawings they created). Every group writes the code for his or her a part of the story and checks it with the mouse on the grid. After this planning and verification part, everybody reads the story collectively and strikes the mouse, becoming a member of the assorted elements of the code written by the completely different teams.

Every group has to rigorously plan, via the code, the actions of the mouse ranging from the purpose the place it had stopped within the earlier stage. For this exercise precision, collaboration and problem-solving are important, in case it’s needed to regulate the code alongside the way in which.

Past the Code: the human affect

The outcomes of the actions are a number of and contact completely different spheres of each studying and communication. By questionnaires, we collected suggestions from youngsters, volunteers and educating workers.

The youngsters’s suggestions was greater than constructive and 98% of them appreciated the proposed actions. All the youngsters had been capable of collaborate fruitfully with their classmates to create a profitable final result. They realized to divide an issue into a number of elements after which deal with it as a complete and so they skilled that what’s deliberate on paper doesn’t at all times work throughout the testing half. In addition they realized {that a} mistake just isn’t a failure however that typically it could even be a possibility to enhance one thing that already exists or create one thing new.

The solutions to the questionnaire additionally revealed a shocking side: whatever the class and faculty, for most kids, interacting and dealing with their classmates was the best problem. This evaluation could present concepts for the lecturers who participated, who might develop related actions to foster cohesion amongst college students.

The volunteers additionally realized from the coaching experiences. For instance, they understood how basic it’s to have the ability to handle the “lifeless time” between one shift and one other: presently, actually, every group should wait its flip to work together with the robotic. To enhance, it’s essential to optimize this wait and make it extra productive and enjoyable, introducing secondary actions for the teams which are ready their flip.

What moved us essentially the most was seeing how this collective exercise might create inclusion amongst youngsters and contain these with disabilities. Classmates helped one another to finish the exercise and obtain the objectives.

Coding in all places

The primary aim of this exercise was to spark curiosity in scientific topics, whereas enjoying a sport. The primary goal was college students, however lecturers and oldsters had been additionally enthusiastic. With this venture we demonstrated how a single methodology can be utilized in numerous methods: coding could be taken out of the standard pc science class and blended with different topics equivalent to language studying, expertise, artwork, geography and civic training.