Our next stop in the Anatolian Maker Movement Project, was a primary school in Balikesir where met 30 bright children of ages 8 and 9, who were willing to spend their week with us in order to learn something that they had never even heard of before. Seeing the sparkles in the children’s eyes when we arrived to their school and started to build their new library, consisting of the 350 books that we collected from our sponsors and the school was the best feeling in the world.
This primary school in Balikesir lacked the STEM education in their curriculum so the children never had the chance to actively take part and learn about STEM earlier. They were all very excited for our presence in their school, and were ready to learn everything that we were about to share with them.
The week first began with an introduction to coding and robotics. We talked about the STEM and the FIRST competition that also focuses on spreading the ethics and philosophy of STEM to the world.
This primary school in Balikesir lacked the STEM education in their curriculum so the children never had the chance to actively take part and learn about STEM earlier. They were all very excited for our presence in their school, and were ready to learn everything that we were about to share with them.
The week first began with an introduction to coding and robotics. We talked about the STEM and the FIRST competition that also focuses on spreading the ethics and philosophy of STEM to the world.
Since they didn’t know what we were about to teach them, it was essential to tell them about Scratch, the programming language that we were going to focus on during the week. It was very joyful to see that our little audience was interested in the capabilities and secrets of Scratch while they were listening to our presentation. This interest was visual when they started to try the functions that we told them about, and take a step to the world of programming. They were curious in their discovery of Scratch and the colorful projects that they had already started to plan. We gave them different challenges to complete, like building an orchestra or creating a basic game. It was pleasing to see that the children adopted the ability to find solutions to the problems that they faced through their journey in Scratch, which had just started.