Are you smarter than a 12 year old?
Celebrating 150 Years with the IET
This week to celebrate 150 years, The Institute of Engineering & Technology hosted a daily YouTube show featuring an array of STEM celebrities including Carol Vorderman, Connie Huq and Maddie Moate.
Our friend and recent winner of IET’s young personality of the year Callum Daniel (icoderobots online) featured daily, conducting some amazing experiments. Today’s show focused on the youth and how the next generation of scientists & engineers will be changing the world.
Our very Oliver Chisnall worked with superstar Callum using the LEGO Education Spike Prime kit to build a robot showing how energy transfer can be measured just like a smartwatch or a fitness tracker.
Pretty crazy right? Now, remember Callum is only 12 years old and Oliver is just 9!! Now I know what you’re thinking and we can’t believe it either, the talents the lads are showing is worthy of celebration but does beg the question of just how key coding could be in the development of our future leaders.
Right from the off the passion and enjoyment Callum and Oliver radiate is contagious and really peaks our interest. Speaking of ‘Peake’s’ big shout out to the lads who’s segment was aired on the same show as Tim Peake, the astronaut. That’s something for the CV in a few years.
The Experiment
The boys built the robots, which we can all agree sounds pretty cool, before taking to the iPads to begin coding. After a very educational trial and error process the boys achieved their goal in figuring out the energy transfer needed to get their creation up a ‘hill’ and to stop at the top. Callum has assured me it’s easy to do so I’ll take his word for it.
The combination of fun and education is a real winner, you gain real world skills such as problem solving, critical thinking & creativity. The 21st Century Skills.
So what do you reckon, are you smarter than a 12 year old? I’m certainly thinking twice now.
