Inspiring software engineers of the future
Tim Hines, Director of Product Engineering & Paul Guy, Software Engineer Team Lead
In a dynamic industry we’re constantly looking to attract the best talent by building a diverse and highly skilled team. But as industry and education changes, one of the challenges we face is inspiring the next generation of software engineers — ensuring we are promoting this career choice to a diverse cohort, demonstrating what a great path this is for people from all backgrounds.
What is the First Lego League?
First Lego League is a global initiative that runs in 88 countries worldwide and involves children, from all backgrounds and genders. Aged 9 to 16 and competing in a series of challenges that help develop their STEM skills — this program runs from September to February, culminating in international finals in America, Asia, and Europe.
Children get to research challenges facing today’s scientists with a theme set each year. This year’s theme is “Space” and children posed such fascinating questions as ‘How do I scratch my nose in a spacesuit?’ and ‘How do I take my dog for a walk-in space?’.
Within this context, children then work as a team to come up with a solution to their problem, applying real-world maths, coding, and science concepts. They are supported in this by learning mentors from the business I work in (Sage and our charitable foundation) and other local businesses that regularly visit their schools. As part of this journey, they learn critical thinking, team-building, and presentation skills that are vital for their future.
Partnering for the future
Working alongside North Tyneside Council we look to target schools in deprived areas and offer opportunities that the children simply don’t get. It was a proud and emotional moment when a school from a low-income area won the regional final last year! Sage sponsored the winning school to travel to the national final in Bristol and this touching story continued, with the trip having a huge impact on one of the children. Not only was it the first time many of them had been away on holiday, but it was the first time they had ever been out for a meal. In 2020 we are expanding our support to more local councils and schools.
Engaging kids in STEM
Alongside solving and presenting their themed challenge, teams build and program a Lego robot to compete in a series of challenges. This part of the program exercises all the key STEM subjects, as they use engineering skills to build their robot, science skills to interact with color, ultrasonic and infra-red sensors, plus technology and maths skills to program the robots.
The tech bit…
The Lego platform (Lego Mindstorms EV3™) uses a proprietary block-based language similar to Scratch™ and PurpleMash™ that children use in schools. Programs start off fairly simply with basic loops and condition statements but can also be built up in complexity, using data from connected sensors so that the robot can interact with its environment. We are constantly amazed at how quick the children pick this up, with the girls often being streets ahead of the boys at this age!
Although totally accessible for children aged 7+, the platform scales right up to under-graduate computer science level and many of our current graduate intakes used Lego Mindstorms™ as part of their undergraduate studies.
“LEGO® Mindstorms® has given children a great way to develop valuable programming skills for over 20 years. As a software engineer at the LEGO Group, I see first-hand the importance these skills will have for future generations. It is vital to provide a fun, learning through play approach when nurturing these skills and LEGO® Mindstorms® is the perfect way to do this. At our regularly held RE:CODE London sessions, the creativity and inventiveness shown by the children is truly amazing, and it is great to see other events encouraging kids to have fun while unfolding their STEAM skills and preparing to become the software engineers of the future” Dan Lough, Application Engineer, LEGO
Building the basics
For schools not quite ready to enter a competition, and for children outside of the 9–16 age range, colleagues from Sage have also used the robotics kits to introduce children in Key Stage 2 to the basics of computational thinking. The hands-on nature of combining coding skills with physical robotics makes it much easier to capture the children’s imagination and keeps them engaged for longer. By the end of the session, they were able to program a self-driving robot and make comparisons with real-life robots in use in many of today’s high-tech factories and manufacturing facilities.
To find out more about our involvement with these programs, check out the following media coverage:
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/lego-crazy-see-how-schoolchildren-14263537
