Ready, steady, program! How children can learn coding (and teach numeracy to a robot) during STEM school visit events

Abstract

STEM topics are often perceived by secondary school students as boring, difficult and uninteresting. Therefore, the authors designed an event to challenge these perceptions. The opportunity was given during STEM School visits to Brunel University where the authors use a 55 minute event to attempt to convince pupils that STEM and in particular computing is fun. During an interactive sessions where students were encouraged to play with robots, they were gently introduced to the art of coding. The results were an increased confidence in their programming abilities and a better perception of STEM. This paper discusses this event in more detail.