The Dnepropetrovsk ORT center located at the Jewish school hosts this week a robotics teaching seminar for secondary schools of ORT system; among its 18 participants are teachers from Ukraine, Estonia, Russia and Moldova.
Viacheslav Leschiner, head of ORT-Russia, has arrived for the opening ceremony; he stressed the importance of Robolab course for shaping in students of adequate idea about real world and implementation of their thought into working structures.
V. Leschiner urged the teachers to actively introduce robotics into school program and highly appreciated the work of the Dnepropetrovsk ORT in this direction. He said, “Students often regard computer basics as an abstract subject, and making robots gives them an opportunity to see the abstract things become reality. Besides they see that real world is more complicated that we expect, for example, a nicely designed and programmed robot has difficulty walking on slopes- it’s reality which influences us , and we have to cope with it”.
Director of ORT-Russia also spoke of changing in regular program financing- now in addition to financing territories there will be money for separate programs, and robotics is one of them.
The seminar opened with a round table held by senior expert of RD department of CIS and Baltics Anna Michurina. She asked the teachers to speak about their problems and discussed in detail the results of the last robotics competition and plans for the next one planned for April.
During the opening the ORT center announced the winners of the Internet version of a popular intellectual game and gave prizes for them; the game has become very popular- it held a hundred tours already, and it means that a hundred thousand times children looked for and found right decisions for complicated tasks.
The seminar continued with lessons given by the best expert in teaching robotics and use of LEGO DACTA and Lego MindStorms in the former Soviet countries Sergey Filippov (St. Petersburg).
During the five days the teachers will learn robotics in detail, study the methods and skills of working with Lego Education, study in practice how to program complicated robots. The climax will be studying organization of robotics Olympiads and contest of robots made by the teachers.
Suzanna Hachatrian, director of ORT-Dnepropetrovsk, says, “We learn a lot here; most centers have robotics sets, some of them the most recent ones, but before now we couldn’t use them properly. After the seminar Robolab teaching will reach a new level. The program is very busy and packed with info but we’re sure that this next competition in Dnepropetrovsk will show much better results”.