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Frequently Asked Questions – Robotics and Programming competitions in Singapore

1. What are the well-known competitions for Robotics and Programming?

For Robotics focused competitions, the World Robot Olympiad (WRO) is generally considered the most popular, while for Programming focused competitions, Singapore has the National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI).

2. What is the difference between these two competitions?

WRO involves designing, building and programming a competition robot. NOI focuses mainly on programming and problem-solving skills.

Image result for wroImage result for national olympiad in informatics
What is it?The World Robot Olympiad is a global robotics competition for young people. The World Robot Olympiad competition uses Lego Mindstorm Robots manufactured by LEGO Education.The Singapore National Olympiad in Informatics (NOI) is modelled after the International Olympiad in Informatics (IOI), the ultimate international competition in computing.
What are the categories in the competition.The tournament comprises of four categories:

(1) Primary for ages 9 – 12;

(2) Secondary for ages 13 – 15;

(3) Tertiary for ages 15 – 19;

(4) Open for all categories

The tournament is broken up into four categories:

(1) Secondary;

(2) Junior College

What is the programming language used in the competition?Lego MindstormsC++, Java, Python
When is the competition held?September AnnuallyMarch Annually
How long is the competition?Typically, across 5 days1 day
Is it an individual or team competition?Team of 3-4Individual

3. How long does it take for a student to train for the above competitions?

Typically, a student is required to be exposed to robotics and/or programming for 1 – 2 years. It would then take approximately 50 hours of training focused purely on the competition. Hence, a high level of commitment from the student is paramount.

4. What is my child learning in The Lab Singapore that will assist in the above competitions?

In the Lab Junior program, students are required to build and program different robots each week using Lego Mindstorms. Lego Mindstorms is the programming language used in WRO. At the end of each term, students are required to complete project work which requires all three aspects, i.e. design, build and program, similar to WRO.

In the Lab program, students start with Google Blockly, enabling them to grasp the concepts of programming and progress on to Python in the advanced stages of the curriculum. Python is one of the programming languages used in the NOI.

5. Is attending The Lab Singapore classes sufficient to participate in the competition?

Unfortunately, no. The competitions are thematic and they vary year on year. Nonetheless, the concepts learnt in The Lab Singapore will assist students in understanding and applying core skills and concepts during the competitions.

As such, we have specially engaged instructors who have experienced in training students for competitions to train our students.

6. What is the suggested learning journey if my child is interested in taking part competitions?

We suggest your child to have at least 6 months to 1 year of exposure in robotics and/or programming before taking part in any competitions. We highly encourage students to take part in their first competition as part of their learning journey and to participate in our internal The Lab monthly competitions. This will allow them to be better prepared when they take part in serious competitions the following year.

A Guide to DSA (Direct School Admission)

As all secondary schools are increasing the proportion of students’ intake though the DSA, more and more parents are considering that route for their child.

Here is a guide to:

What is DSA and how it works?

Direct School Admission for secondary schools (DSA-Sec) allows students to apply to some schools before taking the PSLE. Students apply based on their talent in sports, CCAs and specific academic areas.

How do schools select students for the DSA?

The selection process varies from school to school, and across DSA categories. For instance, they may have to submit a portfolio of their achievements, result slips, CCA records and a personal statement or character reference. The student may also have to go through interviews, camps, trials or tests for that particular area of talent.

Who can apply?

Primary 6 students can apply for DSA-Sec based on a wide-range of talents, including:

  • Sports and games
  • Visual, literary and performing arts
  • Debate and public speaking
  • Science, mathematics and engineering
  • Languages and humanities
  • Uniformed groups
  • Leadership (e.g. prefects)

Which DSA schools are Technology-focused talent area?

As technology related interests are gaining in popularity, so are schools in adopting students who are talented in that particular area. Schools who adopt the DSA program with a focus in technology related talent areas typically require students to have a portfolio and/or go through an interview process to present themselves and their achievements.

Schools that adopted the DSA program with a focus in technology related talent areas:

Schools

Talent Area

Admiralty Secondary SchoolRobotics and Computing
Anderson Secondary SchoolRobotics
Anglo-Chinese School (Independent)Robotics (Boys)
Bukit View Secondary SchoolCoding and Computational Thinking Skills
Changkat Changi Secondary SchoolSTEM
Chua Chu Kang Secondary SchoolRobotics and Automation
Clementi Town Secondary SchoolCoding
Commonwealth Secondary SchoolRobotics
Dunman High SchoolInfocomm and Robotics
Fuchun Secondary SchoolRobotics
Gan Eng SengSTEM
Hai Sing Catholic SchoolRobotics
Hillgrove Secondary SchoolSTEM
Jurongville Secondary SchoolSTEM
Kent Ridge Secondary SchoolComputational Thinking
Loyang View Secondary SchoolSTEM
Manjusri Secondary SchoolScience and Technology
Maris Stella High SchoolRobotics
NUS High SchoolScience, Mathematics
Pei Hwa Secondary SchoolRobotics
Regent Secondary SchoolRobotics
River Valley HighCoding
School of Science and TechnologyComputing, Electronics
Singapore Chinese Girls’ SchoolRobotics
Tampines Secondary SchoolSTEM
West Spring Secondary SchoolInfocommunications
Woodlands Ring Secondary SchoolRobotics
Yio Chu Kang Secondary SchoolCoding
Yishun Town Secondary SchoolRobotics
Zhonghua Secondary SchoolComputer Programming

 

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The Lab Singapore Expands To Central West

We are thrilled to announce today that The Lab Singapore is expanding to Singapore’s Central West region.

Through an exciting partnership with Repton Schoolhouse, our The Lab Infant and The Lab Junior programmes will find their new premises in the Central West starting today.

“The Lab Singapore is focused on high quality member journey and experience,” said Adelene Fong, Managing Director of The Lab Singapore. “With our huge success in Katong, positive feedback and strong validation from existing parents and students, we are expanding to bring about more awareness on the importance of programming/coding in Singapore.”

Free coding bootcamp trial classes will still be held at The Lab Singapore @ Katong V.

The Repton Schoolhouse is located at 321, Alexandra Central Road #03-11 Alexandra Central, 159971.

 

About Repton Schoolhouse

Repton Schoolhouse offers a unique curriculum combining the best of the British and Singaporean education systems and traditions. The combination of these and the finest educational practitioners, enable each child to be guided and encouraged to grow and develop their potential within a nurturing and supportive environment.

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5 Top Questions Parents Ask About Coding For Their Kids

Here are the 5 Top Questions Parents Ask about Coding for their kids:

1. Why should my child learn Coding even though he/ she does not wish to work in the IT industry in the future?

Learning to code is not able being software engineers or programmers, it is about developing computational thinking skills. Computational thinking is how software engineers solve problems. It combines mathematics, logic and algorithms, and teaches you a new way to think about the world.

Computational thinking teaches you how to tackle large problems by breaking them down into a sequence of smaller, more manageable problems. It allows you to tackle complex problems in efficient ways that operate at huge scale. It involves creating models of the real world with a suitable level of abstraction, and focus on the most pertinent aspects. It helps you go from specific solutions to general ones.

2. Isn’t programming too complex for kids? I have heard of C, Java – how can young kids learn those?

Traditionally programming required knowledge of syntax, that is, the use of sequences of text including words, numbers, and punctuation. You are right, this is a complexity that children cannot successfully navigate.

But visual-based programming, such as Blockly, that uses blocks like pre-created code, and ensures kids can focus on the fundamental programming logic, rather than syntax.

Children can easily drag and drop to write a program (that is, build a game, a story) that works. Kids don’t get frustrated with a program not working because of a missing semi colon!

3. When should I start my child to learn how to code?

It’s common knowledge that children under the age of 7 acquire foreign languages extremely rapidly. So why not the computer vernacular?  Researchers have found that the best age range to begin teaching children a second language is between 2 and

Childhood and early adolescence are the critical age ranges for children to learn anything, including programming, because their brains are still developing and learning how to learn.

4. I don’t know anything about computers or programming. How do I know how he./ she is progressing?

Every member of The Lab is meticulously tracked by our system. From the time taken to finish a challenge, to number of attempts taken, all these are captured and recorded in our cloud database. Parents can log in into our system to see your child’s learning progression. Our curriculum is well-documented and reviewed by Dr. Oka Kurniawan, a professor in SUTD.

5. There are so many programming languages. Which one should my child learn?

The easiest coding language to learn for the first time learners is Python. Python is open source and free to use, even for commercial applications. Thanks to its flexibility, Python is one of the most widely used high-level programming languages today.

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Coding In The Classroom: Is MOE Ready For It?

In 2017, Singapore announced a $3 million plan, dubbed the Digital Maker Programme, that aims to distribute 100,000 micro:bits to schoolgoing children and adults over the next two years to teach basic coding.

Coding is an enrichment programme in schools, like music and ballet. Computing is now offered as an O-level subject at Secondary 3, starting in 19 schools. If digital literacy could be as important as reading and writing, should coding be part of the school curriculum in Singapore?

There are practical difficulties to such an approach includes a lack of qualified teachers. The bottom line? If coding is the language of the future, the answer to whether it should be taught in all schools is obvious. As with all things, the devil is in the details. When will MOE be ready for it?

Australia: In 2017, Australian schools introduced the new Digital Technologies curriculum. Every child from the first year of school to Year 10 will be working on the curriculum.

Japan: Starting with the primary schools in 2020, computer programming will be made a compulsory subject in Japanese primary schools. It will be followed by the implementation in middle schools in 2021 and high schools in 2022.

UK: Since 2014, UK is the first country in the G20 to ensure that every child is schooled in coding from Primary until G.C.S.E.

China: Many Chinese children are now getting exposed to coding by the time they reach preschool, as private coding classes for preschoolers open up. Normally, youths of this age are working on mastering math and Chinese, but they are soon possess new skills in technology to go alongside these others.

US: Though Obama’s initiative of Hour of Code, 28 million Americans has been exposed to Coding. One quarter of K-12 schools have integrated Computer Science into their curriculum.

References:

  1. https:// fossbytes.com/ japan-computer-programming-compulsory-subject-schools/
  2. https:// bigthink.com/ ideafeed/ china-is-already-teaching-coding-to-the-next-generation
  3. https:// pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/ articles/ coding-in-the-classroom
  4. https:// edtechnology.co.uk/ Article/ digital-learning-day-coding-in-schools
  5. https:// www.straitstimes.com/ opinion/ add-coding-to-basic-skills-taught-in-schools

 

Computational Thinking and Human Development

Future-Proof Your Child Through Coding

Computational thinking is effectively a way that humans have been figuring out every aspect of life since time immemorial. We have spent centuries understanding what the component parts of any subject matter could be, and the really important ones, we note down so that these can be taught to future generations, such as with music, mathematics, economics, and similar. Other skills that we acquire through socialisation, such as language and social-emotional development for example, require the same steps in order to develop effectively, we just don’t call it computational thinking.

Computational thinking is quite obviously required for coding computers but in a more explicit, concrete and inflexible manner. Coding is a relatively new human activity that is likely to lead the next stage of human development but computational thinking has been around for much longer and is required of us in every aspect of life and from nearly day one.

Computational thinking is described as a process of analysing an array of information in order to identify basic parts (decomposition), ways that the parts consistently work together effectively (pattern recognition), ignoring the unrelated bits (abstraction), logging these elements as steps involved to achieve the process repeatedly (algorithm), and testing out the identified system for faulty assumptions, correcting them where necessary (evaluating solutions).

We do this more often when we are young as a necessary part of learning how to exist in the world and much less as we age and define reliable (enough) rules to live by. When we are young, our brains are primed to do this, but over time we capitalise less frequently on this natural ability. Capitalising on this innate way of learning about the world, ensuring we can identify and positively utilise the ability is one way to ensure that we are all able to continue this important process well beyond the natural developmental period of youth and retain this critical skill throughout life.

Computational thinking has been embedded into standard school curricula in many nations now, whether taught as a discrete learning area, as with the UK and USA, or embedded in each class, as occurs in Finland. The

Given that estimates of up to 60% of current work that can be coded into a logarithm is estimated to be given to machines in the next couple of decades, it is important not just to have an important workforce skill of programming or coding computers in the future but also understanding the way they work, or don’t, is potentially the next step in the development of the critical life skill of computational thinking. For those who are not supported in learning this apparently future-critical skill, there may be a different array of career opportunities, but they are likely to be limited and limiting. Whether one wants to learn to code or not, Computational Thinking is already with us and is here to stay.

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What is Computational Thinking?

Computational Thinking has been identified as the bedrock of 21st century skills which anyone should have.

1 What is computational thinking? Wing first defined computational thinking in her 2006 in ACM Communications?Computational thinking involves solving problems,designing systems,and understanding human behaviour, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science?

2 One of the biggest contribution of computational thinking is,as stated,in the area of solving problems.Computational thinking helps one to ask how difficult the problem is to solve,and what the best way to solve the problem is.In this article we will share a problem solving framework inspired from how computer scientists solve problems.This framework is called PCDIT.

PCDIT

PCDIT is a problem solving framework to help novice programmers to write code.

At the same time,we can apply such framework to other context and situations even where computer code is not involved.The framework consists of five non-linear steps that programmers do in solving problems.It starts with P which stands for (P) roblem formulation.

(P)ROBLEM FORMULATION

In this step, one asks questions like: What is the input to this problem? What do we have in hand to start with? What is the output of the problem? What do we want to achieve? What is the computation involved? Or what is the process we need to do? Though this steps is simple as it sounds, novice programmers may have difficulties in identifying the input and the expected output.Sometimes they don’t ask further questions like what kind of input they have,what the domain of the input is,or even what the boundary cases are.

(C)ASES

Thinking through this problem formulation may sound abstract,and that is where step C comes into
play.This step stands for (C)ases,or in programming is more commonly called Test Cases. Rather than
jumping straight into implementing a solution, a programmer designs test cases based on the
problem formulation.Designing test cases may help us to formulate the problem in a more precise manner.It may also help us to think of the boundary cases.The main point of this step is to go into the concrete example and detailsof the various cases in this problem.

(D)ESIGN OF ALGORITHM

Thinking about various cases does not only help us to re-formulate the problem to be more precise, it also helps us to bridge to step D,which stands for (D)esign of Algorithm. By looking at the Cases and work on
those cases, we can start writing our step by step approach in solving the problem.These steps
constitute a solution to the problem,an algorithm.The key element in this step is to write those steps and
re-write them again.One should refine those steps, looking for patterns and common steps that is to be done again and again. Almost all algorithmic solutions comes into three kind of basic structures: sequential, branching,and iteration.We will discuss these patterns in another articles, but now, we are ready for implementation.

(T) ESTING

The last step is called T for (T)esting. One should always test their implementation and see if their solution works.What may not be obvious is that such testing should not be done only after the whole implementation is finished.Rather,it should be done in small bites as the solution is being implemented. One should learn to test in steps as well as to test for all the possible cases.We can see how these steps may not be linear as we can discover more cases or even found out that the solution may need some refinement.There maybe cases when we need to refine our problem formulation.

In summary, PCDIT framework which is used to help programmers writing a computer code can be used consciously or unconsciously by anyone in any other problem solving situations.Such computational thinking helps one to solve problems systematically.Such thinking helps one to solve the problems more thoroughly by analyzing different cases of the problems.Such thinking encourages iteration and refinement of the solutions as well as testing those solutions in bites and in big chunks.Maybe that is why computational thinking is identified as the bedrock of 21st century skills for today’s world and the future.

References

(1) Kurshan,B.Teaching 21st Century Skills For 21st Century Success Requires An Ecosystem Approach
https://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarakurshan/2017/07/18/teaching-21st-century-skills-for-21st-century-successrequires-an-ecosystem-approach/#116570f73fe6 (accessed Jul 24,2018).
(2) Wing,J.M.Computational Thinking.Commun. ACM 2006,49 (3),33?35.

Download this White Paper – Computational Thinking

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You’re Invited To The Lab Open House

We are inviting all parents to join us on 6th Oct for an Open House! Meet our experts and learn how can help your child to thrive in the future digital economy.



During the event we will be touching on what Computational Thinking is, Computational Thinking in Childhood Educational Psychology, Technology trends in Singapore and Internet Safety for Children. These talks will be given by our distinguished guest speakers and industry experts.


Open House

All participants will receive a goodie bag and also a voucher for $100 off membership fees when they become The Lab members.

We hope to see you there! Do share this with your family and friends!

Attendance is strictly by registration (limited to 30 slots only).

REGISTER NOW: http://www.thelab.sg/openhouse