JUNIOR LAB
CREATIVE GATEWAY INTO THE WORLD OF TECHNICAL POSSIBILTIES
This fall, during the first week of school-holidays for a third consecutive year, we at Axel Springer together with Start-coding e.V. hosted Junior Lab.
Junior Lab is an opportunity for girls and boys between the ages of 8 and 14 to explore the endless possibilities of hardware and software, to discover and explore the digital world in a creative and playful way and develop important skills in dealing with the technology, optimizing the benefits and minimizing the drawbacks.
One-week holiday camp, full of fun, discovery, creativity, development and implementation of ideas. Vibrant access to the fantastic world of endless technical possibilities in a fun way.
Understanding computers and learning the basics of coding helps children to develop an appreciation of how things work and what is happening behind the scene. It also teaches them how software engineers use math in order to solve problems in a logical and creative way.
Through playful programming, children learn to solve problems effectively and creatively. This can be achieved through various games and exercises, working with simple programs and / or dealing with robots. Gradually, the kids build up IT skills and an understanding of the way a computer works — that is, it always just executes commands we give it through the combination of different codes.
Founded in 2014, Junior Lab regularly takes place at Axel Springer, turning rather a corporate world upside down filling the entire Passage with laughter, creativity and joy.
Start Coding e.V. supports since 2014 the Junior Lab in cooperation with Sven and Juliane Ehmann as well as a great network of tutors and helpers.
One week of Junior Lab means five different workshops, designed in a way, where each participant has a possibility to participate in each workshop once.
A brief overview of 2019 workshops
DREAM HOLOGRAMS
Children transform themselves into glowing creatures and film themselves. This video sequence is then converted, in the open-source program called Blender, into a floating hologram when projected onto a large pyramid mirror. In addition, kids learn how to build a mini version of pyramid mirrors, in order to, with the help of a smart phone, build own three-dimensional hologram videos at home.
DENKIGAMI
Denkigami are the paper animals, made to teach kids the basics of electronics in a playful way. They’re inspired by animal’s actual abilities to produce or sense electricity. Denkigami are dedicated to all the kids, regardless their technical knowledge. The distinctive aesthetics and fun narratives engage children with different interests, avoiding cliché gender or age division.
STOP MOTION
In this workshop kids are building robots and monsters from recycled materials and animate them via stop-motion technology. The children get familiarized with the professional camera technology and animation software. Everyone becomes part of a small film crew from directing to set design and script.
CATAPULT
The micro-controller Arduino is the “all-purpose weapon” of electronic craftwork. In this workshop, “Arduino” will be connected with a motion sensor and a self-made catapult and then programmed to fire the catapult when someone passed it.
E-TEXTILES
The smaller the electronic modules are, the easier it will be to integrate these in our everyday clothing, turning the ordinary every-day pieces into “smart clothes” with sensors and interfaces. In this workshop kids are sewing the micro-ships into the shoulder pads and connect them with batteries and LEDs.
Junior Lab program constantly being developed, adjusted and reinvented. The program supported by an experienced and versatile team of artists, designers, teachers, writers, tech experts and developers. Children build and program robots, compose favorite songs on self-made instruments, design smart clothing, build own games.
Junior Lab also gives its little guests an outlook in the future: How it feels to be a game designer, film producer, inventor, founder or a hacker.
At the end of every program children have an opportunity to showcase their parents, friends and relatives what they have achieved, built, programmed and created, which is a great highlight, sense of achievement for the kids and a moment of pride for every parent. Through this exercise they also learn how to tell a cool story — first steps towards the storytelling with a little bit of improvisation, theatrics, or a pinch of embellishment.
GETTING FIT FOR THE FUTURE
- What can parents do so that their children not only use the technology, but really understand it?
- How do we give them an opportunity to become digitally mature and help them to understand various processes that happen behind the scene?
- How does a computer work — how it executes the commands that we give it through different codes and how do the software engineers use math in order to solve problems in a logical and creative way? How to apply math to real world issues and formulate creative solutions.
We are surrounded by technical innovation. It is everywhere, it accompanies us in everything we do, from brushing our teeth and doing our laundry and the way we read our books to artificial intelligence, aerospace and healthcare. Behind every technology is a a set of complex commands, developed by the humans and the ability of understand the relation between these systems and commands is becoming more and more important.
Being part of the fast transforming company and being passionate about the topic of digital integration I am convinced that enabling access to the basics of coding is a key, regardless of age, position, or the business we happen to be in, all of us need to understand the technology in order to survive and be successful.
This understanding makes it not easier being a mom of bright and curious 9-years old with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I learn from him a lot. For him it is not about why, but rather about how and now. He inspires me to learn new things in order to be modern and cool mom and to be able to answer his ever-growing questions. This bottom-up learning is new and it is on my opinion the future which we need to appreciate.
Things are changing with the speed if light and we need to not only to adjust to this speed ourselves, but also understanding the future need for new competencies, new forms of creativity and making our kids fit for the future by enabling our kids early enough to interact with the technology around them instead passively consuming it.
Children develop creativity by experimenting and making mistakes. By trying things out, they learn about failing, about learning from its failure and that it is an extensive part of being successful. If it does not work for from the first time, it will do from the second or a third. There’s no better way to boost determination and straighten the character than dealing with challenges and be successful in whatever career they choose to pursue later in life.
DIVERSITY STARTS EARLY
We are constantly talking about diversity, inclusion, male vs female ratio and under-representation of women in the tech related fields.
This what makes Junior Lab so special, it is diversified circle of participants. This year we had more girls than boys, which is a very amazing and promising observation. Great example of how it can work. Breaking clichés, barriers and creating equal chances at very early stage.
On my opinion early technological education is the window of opportunity with the full potential of breaking the traditional gender roles and the stigma of male/ female professions and fields.
If girls are growing in very traditional, rather patriarchal environment with the very clear and radical division of male/ female jobs, fields and responsibilities, tech for men and sewing for girls, then it is most likely girls will not choose this path in the future. And we will be confronted again and again with shortages of women in tech and problem of male/ female ratio.
I sincerely believe in supporting and empowering more women in technology and Junior Lab is a great opportunity to steer in the other direction and to awaken the interest among the girls and to show the parents that ballet tutu dress can be easily combined with coding, holograms and computing.
WHY WE AT AXEL SPRINGER SUPPORT THIS INITIATIVE
We believe that understanding the technology and digital education is a key for the future. We see it as our duty to support this wonderful initiative, we thrive to incorporate coding and computational thinking in early education and be an integral part of it. We are very proud to partner with Junior Lab and StartCoding eV.
We are very happy to also be a sponsor of number of the diversity tickets, enabling kids from families with rather difficult financial situation to participate and give these kids an equal opportunity. Education should be available to every child in an equal form and we strongly believe in it.
By supporting such initiatives, we actually invest in our future, in the future of our society.
If not now, then when?
KEEP IT GOING
Children are like little sponges: they soak in information from the stimuli surrounding them and early learning can set them up for life. It is our job as parents to choose the right stimuli, to encourage the curiosity and enable them to try out things.
The latest edition of Junior Lab is now over, so what can parents do to keep the gained excitement and eagerness going? Continue and encourage!
There ist vast variety of activities that make it easy to keep going.
Tynker, Scratch, mBot and much, much more.
Illustration based visual programming languages, are a pretty cool to start with! Tynker and Scratch from MIT with Drag-and-drop function are very straight forward and easy to use. Kids simply connect blocks to make things move and create animations. It is a fast way of getting this sense of achievement and boosting self-esteem.
If there is an interest to learn more about robotics — mBot and B.O.B.3 are the education robots for beginners, that makes teaching and learning robot programming simple and fun. With just a screwdriver, the step by step instructions, children can build a robot from scratch and experience the joys of hands-on creation.
As they go, they will learn about a variety of robotic machinery and electronic parts, the fundamentals of block-based programming, and develop their logical thinking and design skills.
This video will wrap up what is already said… watch, get inspired, spread the word and help kids foster their creativity, develop logical and “computational” thinking and build persistence when they encounter challenges. Help them realize that they can build almost anything they can imagine.
