The Year 9 and 10 STEM class have been developing their problem solving and computational thinking skills in STEM with the design and building of LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots.

Looking back to February, in Math and Digital Technology we celebrated a fantastic computational thinking “Two’s Day”: Tuesday 22/02/2022, which is a funny palindrome, (you read it forwards or backwards and you get the same number). This is a special type of date which we won’t see again for a long time in the future.

As futurists try to predict the uncertain century, our school is preparing our West Coast rangatahi for the workplace of tomorrow with 21st Century STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Maths) skills. At WHS, our Year 9 and 10 STEM students, with Ms Davies & Mr Harrison, have been learning about robotics in all shapes and sizes, from small speedy Spheros to submersible underwater vehicles. They have been developing their problem solving and computational thinking skills in STEM with the design and building of LEGO Mindstorms EV3 robots. They are learning to ‘teach’ their robots to dance and to develop simple artificial intelligence (A.I.) code so it avoids obstacles.

Now, whether or not you believe the negative news's predictions that in the future up to 50% of jobs may be replaced by A.I. and robots, at least you can rest assured that we are preparing our people to be able to plan and persevere through programming problems. Or, at the very least, they’ll be able to lead the resistance against our ‘robot overlords’. ;)