Using New Technology to Empower Enduring Principles

By Morten Vestergaard Andersen, EMEA Partner at LEGO Ventures

Over its nearly 90-year lifetime, the LEGO Group has been fundamentally rooted in the idea of learning through play. This is based on the conviction that children (and adults) learn best with curiosity, creativity, and most importantly, deep engagement. Being engaged in meaningful play and learning can facilitate the acquisition of critical skills such as problem solving, creativity, collaboration, and mental adaptability.

While the world has changed significantly since the initial invention of the LEGO® system, what and how we teach our children has remained surprisingly stagnant up until now. There has been a fundamental gap between what we know are important skills to equip learners with and the methods and content we use to teach them.

With the emergence of COVID-19 and a drastically changing education landscape, EdTech products hold immense potential as enablers of open-ended and playful approaches to learning. When based in strong pedagogy, these technologies can improve the accessibility and scalability of high-quality education significantly. This is why we at LEGO Ventures are so focused on supporting EdTech companies as one of our main investment areas.

Many of the key trends which have the potential to bring holistic skill development to students are based on the careful implementation of new technologies within strong pedagogies. Artificial Intelligence can empower personalized learning, serving strength- and interest-based challenges to help teachers keep students in a state of flow. Immersive technologies such as simulations, VR, or AR which, despite a slower adoption curve, offer a wealth of new ways to convey knowledge and set up more open-ended challenges. Or within classroom infrastructure, where better ways to capture, assess, and communicate learning activities can help bridge traditional school requirements with more diverse methods often conducive for skills-based learning.

These are just some of the ways that EdTech can help students, teachers, and school leaders on a journey towards facilitating more open-ended learning approaches. As we can safely expect recent disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to have lasting impact on the education sector, now more than ever is the time to be supporting the advancement of EdTech tools to ensure everyone, everywhere — even from home — has access to high quality learning.

Founded in 2018, LEGO Ventures is the strategic investment arm of the LEGO Brand Group focusing on the future of creativity, learning, and play. Learn more at legoventures.com.