Programs

Ottawa Robotics Academy offers customized programs to meet the needs of both pre-kindergarten and primary students (ages 4-8) as well as the junior to intermediate students (9-13). While the same powerful ideas are addressed, the pace and accompanying programming activities vary by grade levels.

Our facilitated workshops provide all the equipment and necessary materials for all our programs. Each session includes a lesson plan, steps for building a robot, programming and sequencing instructions. Additionally, each participant completes a robotics design journal as part of the coursework. Ottawa Robotics Academy is pleased to offer two specific robotics programs as follows:

 

Designed for open ended play, this program lets children create any experience through educational robotics- a character from a story, a carousel, a dancer, a race helicopter- anything they can imagine. Children engage in playful learning, cultivate their curiosity for the technological world, explore problem solving and understand concepts such as sequencing, cause and effect, programming, sensors and motors. This is an engaging introduction to powerful ideas from robotics, computer science, and engineering in a structured, developmentally appropriate paradigm. Children as young as four are given the opportunity to learn programming, sequencing and engineering concepts without the need for a screen or tablet. Additionally, our program appeals to children who are not Lego enthusiasts and to those children that have limited reading and writing skills. After being immersed in our program, young children will be able to engage in both computational thinking and engineering design while creating their personalized robots. Our facilitated workshop integrates the use of art materials, literacy, music and dance through robotics to deliver a unique and fun activity.

 

Using the Lego Mindstorm and Lego WeDo platforms, students can build robots and use software to plan, test and modify sequences of instructions from a variety of real life robotic behaviors. Our programs tap into the children’s innate desire to explore, create, investigate and learn in both free and guided play. Using educational robotics stimulates interest in hard science and develops motor and cognitive skills through robot building.  Our program utilizes what children already know and love- Lego bricks-and uses them as a powerful educational tool. Students will recognize that there are several ways of approaching a problem and there are multiple solutions for a successful outcome.