Toy group Lego says more learning from education program

Danish international toy group Lego says that its robot education program - which teaches children from the ages of 3 up the basics of coding - is doing really well in China.

The program was launched by the group nearly 20 years ago and is offered by the company to schools.

Robot software is the set of coded commands or instructions that tell a robot what tasks to perform.

Hao Hongji, the director of Lego Education's R&D center in Beijing said coding - a highly regarded skills nowadays that can cost a fortunate to master - is slowly becoming a part of mainstream educational courses, starting as early as the pre-school stage.

A boy tests a Lego robot at a robot contest at the Women and Children's Activity Center in Anyang, Henan province. Bi Xingshi / For China Daily

"Of course we don't teach 3 years-old coding, but to build up their cognitive abilities through playing around with Lego toys," he said.

"It's necessary preparation for learning code when they are older."

In Lego's robot education program, kids models with the tiny bricks from the age three and then move on to construct simple devices at the first grade of primary school, using "coding graphical language" and then progressing to learning more advanced coding in the third grade.

Hao said his company believes such activities help stimulate and cultivate children's creativity and encourage them to create.

Educational planners in China appear to share the same line of thinking.

Experts say Chinese education is increasingly focusing on robot programing and Lego believes its coding classes can make a major contribution.

With the solution provided by the Danish toy company, teachers are fully trained to encourage students' creativity and evaluate their performance and cognitive progress in unconventional ways.

In 2014, the Ministry of Education and Lego signed an agreement to provide its robot coding curriculum to selected schools from 2015 to 2019.

Under the program schools are equipped with Lego toys and robots.

"We started the robot programming education 18 years ago in China," Hao said.

"More schools, institutions and parents are accepting the idea and think robot building is an useful activity," he added. "Some schools even list it as compulsory course."

With people's mindsets changing over the years, Lego says it has recognized the huge potential in China for supplying the education programing market.

"Not only first tier cities, but many less developed places also have great potential, given the large number of schools in China," he added.

renxiaojin@chinadaily.com.cn