The story of Robot Explorers is a journey that has progressed from “helping a friend”, to something which became a hobby and is now a wonderful and fulfilling career.
Jaco became interested in LEGO Education and the unique opportunity it presented to introduce STEM Principles to learners in a fun and interactive way. He started teaching a few lessons at a toy store over weekends, using LEGO Education’s standard curriculum.
These weekends became holidays.
Soon we were approached by Dr Elsie Calitz from Regio Private School and we embarked on a journey to teach mechanics and coding to the learners at her school; a road we are still walking with Regio Private School.
Over the past 7 years we have continuously maintained our curriculum using LEGO Education’s resources as the baseline. We have combined this basis with Jaco’s background in engineering to update and refine our curriculum and classes – to ensure that our learners remain engaged and our classes remain relevant.
Our classes have been designed to be age specific to allow learners to progress and advance at their own pace.
The class durations are usually 45 minutes during weekdays or double lessons of 90 minutes every second Saturday.
All the equipment required for the classes is provided by us, to ensure that none of our learners are disadvantaged and that everyone receives the same exposure to mechanics, robotics and coding during our classes.
Some important milestones on our journey:
We believe broad exposure is essential for balanced development. To this end, we have prepared and assisted our learners to participate in local and international events.
These have included the following competitive events:
We are currently collaborating with Lawrence Technological University in Michigan, USA, to host the international Robofest competition in conjunction with Hoërskool Waterkloof. This will provide the participants with an opportunity to compete at an international level, using an autonomous robot of their own creation.