The Ministry of Education has begun five-day robotics and coding training workshop for Federal Unity College coaches (FUCs). The program is in collaboration with the Coderina Education and Technology Foundation and the Technology and Service Education Development’s Continuing Professional Development (CPD) scheme.
The coaches gathered on Monday at Queens College in Lagos to formalize the training and expressed excitement about the influence the program will have on them and their job.
Mrs Elizabeth Adedigba, Director, Technology and Science Education Department, Federal Ministry of Education, declared the event open and stated that the goal of the training was to empower teachers in coding and robotics so that they could train their students for national and international competitions.
Adedigba stated that the training was aimed at teachers in preparation for the Cargo Connect yearly challenge in 2021/2022.
She stated that the purpose of this year’s topic was to investigate how to construct a better future for everyone, as well as the use of teamwork and imagination to create a better tomorrow together.
Coding and robots, she believes, are the future of the entire globe, and “our youngsters cannot be left behind.” All they need is a conducive environment to generate fantastic ideas that can address our day-to-day difficulties.”
Adedigba stated that the coding and robotics program began with 19 Federal Unity Colleges, and the successful results and learning outcomes achieved through the pilot program persuaded the Permanent Secretary’s directive that all 104 Federal Unity Colleges participate in the program.
She utilized the opportunity to instruct principals to incorporate the cost of the engagement in their annual budgets, as well as to guarantee that they register for and purchase robotic kits in order to compete in both yearly national and international competitions.
Dr Mrs Tokunbo Yakubu-Oyinloye, Principal of Queens College Yaba and Chairman of FUCs Nigeria, stated that the competitions in which Nigerian students have participated have demonstrated that they can compete with their counterparts all over the world, and praised the Ministry of Education for the initiative over the past three years of the workshop.
“Robotics and coding are now being employed in most industries to ensure that work is done faster, easier, and safer,” she added.
Femi Niyi, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Coderina Education and Technology Foundation, stated that Coderina is committed to transforming education through the First Lego League (FLL), a project-based robotics programming program that teaches children how to use technology to solve modern-day challenges.
According to him, Queens College came first and also earned an award for Nigeria in Greece last year out of 113 countries, which was the first time Nigeria participated in the program.
Meanwhile, Nigerian students competing in the FLL competition would use research and robotics.
Every year, the FLL team comes together to announce and launch a brand-new season of the robotics competition, in which over 500,000 young learners from 115 nations compete. This involves 1,500 students from 150 teams comprised of students from all 109 FUCs as well as other public and private secondary schools in Nigeria.
