Exciting News for Bendicion Kids! Mitch Rosenberg of KinderLab Robotics provides an exciting new opportunity for students at Bendicion de Dios!
/Our Students To Get KIBO
On Jan 6, Jody Klein, board member of Under the Same Moon (UTSM), graciously opened her home for our entire board to have a dinner discussion and delightful meeting with Mitch Rosenberg, Social Entrepreneur and Co-Founder of KinderLab Robotics, located in Waltham, Mass. Mitch spent the evening getting acquainted with us, patiently listening to and answering our questions and concerns. After describing how KIBO Robot Kits were developed and how they worked, Mitch encouraged the board to create and implement its own robotic program on the spot. We were all captivated and gleeful upon discovering how this simple, yet extremely mind-enriching set of materials would capture the interest and greatly enrich the educational experience for students at Bendicion De Dios (BDD). Then to the delight of all, Mitch donated $2000.00 worth of interactive robotics kits to BDD.
To learn more about KinderLab Robotics, visit their website at: www.kinderlabrobotics.com.
About Mitch
Mitch is a brilliant, kind and caring person whose background is in design engineering, as well as marketing and managing firms that have innovative technology ideas that can make a difference. In light of this, he partnered with an Early Childhood Education powerhouse and social innovator, Dr. Marina Umaschi Bers, to start a company whose mission is to introduce STEM education to children ages 4-7. Together they created a robot which interacts with programmed building blocks that young children can link together to make the robot perform.
Beyond his work, Mitch is a member of Congregation Beth El of Sudbury, where UTSM board members, Jane and Martin Brauer also belong. This congregation has a strong thread of social action filtering through our prayers. We believe in practicing “Tikkun Olam” (Hebrew for repairing the World). Over many years of knowing us, understanding our mission for BDD and watching us sell jewelry and promote BDD, he decided to make this kind and generous donation. We are all very grateful for his thoughtfulness and generosity and hope he can travel to BDD to see the kits in action!
What Do Children Learn with KIBO?
What Is KIBO?
Coding (or programming) is a new kind of literacy. But it exercises mental muscles that are useful for many other activities and skills. When playing with KIBO, young children learn programming ideas that are directly related to foundational concepts in math, literacy, science and humanities. These include sequencing, modularity, cause-and-effect, and patterns. Research shows that sequencing is foundational for academic success, for math and literacy development, as well as for executive function.
Furthermore, children engage in habits of mind such as: design process when they iteratively develop and test an idea; problem solving when their KIBO programs don’t work the way they want; and executive functions when they plan and execute their projects with different kinds of constraints such as time, resources or materials.
