The University of Oxford forecasts that in the next 20 years as many
as 47 percent of jobs around the globe will become completely automated. Meanwhile, predictions on the number of connected devices that will be in use by 2020 as part of the Internet of Things vary from 20 billion to 75 billion.

Because of this proliferation of Computers, Apps and Robotics, there’s a growing anxiety about the increasing role of artificial intelligence and computers, in particular, whether machines will make workers obsolete. Understanding what computers can and can’t do is fundamental in addressing these anxieties. Schools and teachers from all disciplines need to teach students how to remodel the technological world around them, we can help them become creators rather than just consumers of technology.

Furthermore, today’s students need to learn, invent, teach others, collaborate, and share their knowledge when it best suits their personal needs, interests and style.

Classrooms need to become places of great joy, creativity, and collaboration that lead students to transform from passive consumers to active creators and inventors.

Teachers need to combine multiple disciplines, enhance learning and prepare students for diverse pathways that prepare them for unforeseen career paths.

Schools need to actively involve student participation by offering multidisciplinary learning experiences and create polymaths…

The real world commands that these “Polymath” versatile, flexible, highly innovative creative minds will be ready to change professions at least 3 times during their lifetime. (Think Tank on Global Education Harvard 2016)

As school instruction still separates disciplines, schools need to offer STREAMS (Science, Technology, Reading, Engineering Arts, Mathematics and Social Sciences) transdisciplinary experiences. These experiences need to engage and stimulate students in getting actively involved in active learning.  During this process, students need to take control of their own learning and take the lead. Only innovative learning experiences inspire students’ imagination and participating and involvement during class instruction.

At the moment, national curricula are advocating that students need to be exposed to computer science, coding, (“Learn to Code Before You Learn to Read”), computational thinking and robotics from kindergarten to 12th grade! The educator community and schools need to simply inspire students to imagine and take control of their own destiny with enthusiasm and confidence.

This seminar is aspirational inspirational and practical as it offers school leaders, educational consultants and curriculum coordinators values, tools and activities that enrich and accelerate the learning process.

This seminar will offer valuable insight to school principals/managers, educational curriculum consultants and master trainers of private High School and Lyceums, as well all other private educational Institutions approved by Ministry of Education and Culture. All schools need to transform and develop their educational practices further, integrating Computational Thinking, Tinkering and Robotics across all disciplines.

This expert educator professional development workshop aims to provide school principals/managers, educational curriculum consultants and master trainers of private High School and Lyceums with the latest state of the art tools, platforms and educational pedagogies that will fully support them to acquire the following types of knowledge, skills and attitude-related objectives:

Knowledge-related objectives

• Understand the remixing |reusing theory as a powerful methodology and classroom instruction for engaging students to excel.
• Comprehend the effects of the global competitiveness in teaching and learning
• Realize that today’s students need to become polymath minds if they want to connect, compete and excel on a global market scale.
• Review full demos of Curricula for NXT, TETRIX of Hummingbird Robotics and Platforms so that to understand how to best integrate them in the learning plans and instruction.

Skills-related objectives (Be able to)

• Integrate Science, Technology, Reading/Writing, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics and Social/Emotional learning to improve student understanding and adequately prepare them in STEM-related jobs and carriers.
• Use Tinkering and computational thinking to solve scientific, engineering as well as social problems and challenges.
• Use programming languages and Robotics in broad and diverse range of disciplines.
• Use creative coding through games and apps to well-prepared students for life and future careers.

Attitude-related objectives

• Inspire students to develop powerful ideas empower self-reflection, clarify their thinking and connect them to solve real-world problems.
• Integrate the use of state of the art resources and tools available such as ROBOTC® for MINDSTORMS with the NXT and TETRIX platforms and Hummingbird Robotics.

In-house seminar objectives:

Ideas, pedagogical methods, tools and recourses demonstrated during the two workshop days will be used to assist with the individual progress of participating schools and workshop participants. In-house training by workshop Instructor will focus on discussing in more detail how tinkering computational thinking can be used to inspire and engage students to pursue aspirations, investigate problems, design solutions and chase curiosities. Therefore, workshop participants will be able to:

• Set processes for continuous improvement of class instruction and school change.
• Transform existing classroom practices to facilitate self-directed, dynamic learning.
• Create performances for meaningful and well-balanced personalities.
• Define ways to measure and evaluate learning outcomes.
• Set policies to accommodate all student needs and curriculum requirements.

The company visit will include a review of the individual plans prepared by the participants during the seminar and an in-depth presentation and brainstorming discussion. Specifically, this discussion will focus on:

• Devising comprehensive school strategies and action plans on how to enable all these transformations to take place in each school
• Implementing tinkering and computational thinking in line with the school strategy and priorities
• Using Robotics across all the curricula and disciplines
• Preparing communication and coordination plans for teachers
• Demonstrating how the new comprehensive approaches in STEM/STREAMS and student-centric practices can inspire students to become creators and owners of knowledge and skills.

After this session, Chryso Christodoulou will prepare a comprehensive report for every participating school institution that will contain comprehensive consultation on how the schools can proceed further and beyond the scope of this seminar and into practical ways of implementing these strategies into the schools ethos.