Learning system "Rot" that 5-year-old children can enjoy and understand difficult and boring "programming" with robots

President Obama allocated an educational budget of 4 billion dollars (about 440 billion yen), saying to Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook former official, "If you are learning programming, I will guarantee that you do not have to live a lifetime job" The importance of "programming (coding)" technology, which increases value in the digital society, such as emphasizing as a national strategy of the society, is often complicated, abstract and boring, so often it is frustrating before learning. A system in which Harvard researchers can learn programming with robot + tablet in order to make children who have just started programming learning more interested in the world of esoteric programming "RootIt is under development.

Root, the code-teaching robot | Harvard Gazette
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/04/root-the-code-teaching-robot/

You can see what kind of programming learning tool Root is in the following movie.

Meet Root: The Robot That Brings Coding to Life - YouTube


"The world is increasingly digitizing," said Harvard University'sWyss InstituteProfessor Radika Napal.


In the digital society, the coding and thinking of coding (programming) is becoming increasingly important.


It is also anticipated that more than one million plugging jobs will be born by 2024. If you learn programming you will not have to be frightened by unemployment.


However, only one in four people can teach programming at school.


So it's Root that anyone can develop programming easily. Root is a system that develops programming skills using robots.


Programming is entered using tablet instead of text.


Touch the screen of the tablet or rotate the screen, so you can code by intuitive operation.


Knowledge of complicated programming language is unnecessary. You can create a program by arranging the icons on the screen.


The created program can be executed immediately using the Root robot. It is a mechanism that can understand the meaning of programming from the movement of robot.


Professor Todd Rose stating that "coding is an abstract act."


General programming is a modest task of entering code by keyboard according to the rules.


Complex and difficult coding work is a boring task for children.


"In the Root project, robots in front of children will tell you the world of programming," said Professor Zifsan Dabrowsky, project manager.


The Root robot, which can be stuck to the white board perfectly, can design a hexagonal shape with a LED light design to make it interesting for children's interests.


The Root robot can not only shine, move and rotate, it is also possible to draw a locus on the white board.


It makes you understand the act of program in a totally different way from past text entry acts.


When the Wyss Institute gave children Root, they immediately understood the concept of programming.


Even children who do not have programming experience and have no knowledge of syntax like "if sentence" can now understand the concept of if statement immediately.


Playing the sound ...


Going in a certain direction ... ...


Root You can learn programming while trying how you can move the robot.


It is possible to correspond to students with a wide range of ages and programming skills of various levels from 5 years old children to college students. A program centered on painting ......


Changeable to color-coded text.


In addition, you can switch the created program to text, so you can learn visually experienced programming concepts with text-based code.


"The ultimate vision is to place Roots in all classrooms so that children around the world can learn programming," Professor Tablovsky said.


The Root robot is a great merit that it can utilize the educational infrastructure already introduced to the education site, such as the whiteboard and tablet.


New text is not necessary.


Students learn happily, teachers can teach fun.


"Students and teachers should love Root," Professor Tablofsky is hoping for Root.


It is OK if there is one Root robot in the classroom.


I do not care about the student's grade or programming proficiency.


Root as an educational tool for everyone to easily learn coding is given a big role.


Wyss Institute is looking for a partner company to jointly develop the system to place the Root system at educational sites all over the world.