In his sophomore year, at the age of twelve, Ruarcc, a student at St. Malachy’s College in north Belfast, began working on building prototypes of robots that could solve puzzles.
The school’s creation of its creative digital technology hub (CDTH) last year made this feasible.
At first, teacher Clare McGrath said, “didn’t believe” that Ruarcc’s robot would function.
A new curriculum for Key Stage Three was implemented by the institution after the opening of the creative digital technology hub.
This includes employing block-based coding to program Lego robots, like Ruarcc’s.
The college’s senior leader for creative skills is Clare McGrath.
A couple of the youngsters were allowed to take kits home with them. “Build whatever you want; impress me,” I told them.
It’s very impressive that the robot can solve problems no matter how confused you are; he demonstrated it to me using 5,000 lines of Python code. “Creativity is an amazing skill, so we need to be providing opportunities in school to see where they can take things—that builds the innovators of the future.”
