Our STEM Workshop at Science Agora
A Lack of Exposure
I just held a STEM workshop at Science Agora as a GMTC member. ( cf GMTC homepage here )
In Japan, only about 15% of students choose engineering. From my personal experience, I think it is because they have never experienced robotics or programming. I believed the problem was not a lack of interest, but a **lack of exposure**.
So in high school (though I'm still in high school, lol), a friend and I founded a STEM learning group, GMTC, to create those opportunities. We organize free workshops in robotics and coding for elementary students. This October, we were thrilled to hold our workshop at Science Agora, Japan’s national science event.
The Workshop
This time, we specifically targeted elementary school kids. We had about 50-70 kids come to our booth—I wasn't really counting, but it was packed!
I taught them the basics of programming (using tools like Scratch and concepts from C++) and let them play with Arduino robots we had built. It was amazing to see them have fun and get excited about making the robots move.
Reflections (振り返り) -block or text-
A common debate I had with many of parents was: "Should we make our kids learn advanced programming like C++ early, or should they start with simple block programming like Scratch?"
Block programming is intuitive and a great entry point for kids. However, it can create a "wall" later, making the transition to text-based code more difficult. But indeed, text-based programming has a high hurdle to get started.
Personally, I believe from a long-term perspective, it's good to start with scratch or mokey banana but also introduce simple text-based code like Python or C++ early on, without relying too much on block programming.