Wrangling robots: encouraging engineers of the next generation

On hearing my daughters' regaling some of their activities and technology at school, I frequently lament 'I wish we had that when I was their age'. I was lucky enough as it was for the early 1980s; for example, my school year was the first to actually get computers in the computer science classroom!

But enough of the trip down memory lane. The British Government has recently announced that it is pledging over £17 million towards robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) research in universities. Of course the drive behind this is as much economic as a love of STEM: Accenture's 2016 report Why Artificial Intelligence is the Future of Growth states that AI could contribute up to £654 billion to the UK economy by 2035, if comprehensively integrated into industry and society. Sectors utilising cutting-edge technology such as pharmaceuticals and aerospace will be able to grow markedly thanks to AI and robotics, so now is indeed a great time for children to learn the necessary core skills.

New Zealand too is determined not to be left behind in the development of such technology, which it is hoped will create new jobs whilst stimulating economic growth. One such programme aimed in this direction is Kiwibots, home to New Zealand's contenders for the annual Vex Robotics World Championship. The largest international robotics competition, over thirty nations are taking part this year. New Zealand's national finals recently took place at Massey University in Albany, north of Auckland. The winning teams have been announced and among those qualifying for the World Championship in Kentucky next month is one from an all-girls school, which is great news.

My daughters attend another all-girls school that competed in the national championships, giving me the opportunity to examine one of their robots in person. Vex EDR primarily consists of metal components including perforated strips reminiscent of the Meccano toy building system I had as a child - and indeed their construction techniques are not dissimilar - although EDR incorporates battery-driven motors and elastic band 'muscles'. EDR is aimed at senior/high school students, but primary/elementary and intermediate schools are not left out, thanks to the mostly plastic-built Vex IQ system which is closer to the Lego Mindstorms/Technic ranges.

Vex EDR robots can either be wheeled or tracked and include towers and arms with manipulators. They can be remote controlled or programmed using ROBOTC, a C-based programming language: not only do the students get to be engineers but computer programmers too. Younger roboteers can use a drag-and-drop interface to assemble code whilst older ones may write and test code using an editor. In order to aid code writing, Robot Virtual Worlds is, as the name suggests, a simulated environment for testing virtual robots, even including an underwater scenario (which is obviously not achievable with the real thing)!

To encourage more girls to participate in the traditionally male world of engineering, the Robotics Education and Competition Foundation has created Girl Powered, a series of challenges for EDR and IQ systems.

In addition to learning specific technical skills, the experience can generate enthusiasm for STEM subjects - after all, it's rather more exciting than most school lessons - whilst providing useful experience in general skills such as collaboration and problem-solving. The creativity and teamwork involved in Vex robotics shows that some elements of science and engineering are not overtly difficult, abstractly mathematical or plain boring. When I was an onlooker at the national finals, the looks of tension and joy on the roboteers' faces said it all.

As Vex themselves state: Think. Create. Build. Amaze.

What better way could there be to encourage children towards STEM careers, especially when AI and robotics will undoubtedly play an ever more important role in the coming decades?

Pre-teen coding electronic turtles: should children learn computer programming?

Way back in the mists of time when I was studying computer science at senior school, I was part of the first year at my (admittedly rural and far from innovative) school to use actual computers. Previous years had been stuck in the realm of punched tape and other such archaic wonders, so I was lucky to have access to the real thing. Now that we use smartphones with several hundred thousand times more memory than the first computer I owned - a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48, if you're interested - I'd like to ask is it worthwhile teaching primary school children programming skills rather than just learning front-end interfaces?

I remember being amazed to learn that about the same time as I was getting to grips with the Sinclair version of BASIC, infants in Japan were already being taught the rudiments of programming via turtle robots and Logo. These days of course, children learn to use digital devices pretty much from the egg, but back then it seemed progressive in the extreme. My elder (but still pre-teen) daughter has so far dabbled with programming, mostly using drag and drop interfaces in game coding sessions and at her school's robot club, which involves the ROBOTC language and Vex robots.

Ironically, if I still lived in Britain then my younger daughter would already be learning computer science at school too, as in 2014 the UK Government made the subject mandatory for all children from five years' old. Not that this step came easily: apparently there was a struggle in the lead up to the curriculum change to find enough qualified teachers. Clearly, the effort involved in establishing such as policy suggests the level of importance placed upon it.

In contrast to the UK, New Zealand has slipped in the educational avant-garde. Digital technology is not a compulsory subject here and many lower-decile schools use old, unsupported software such as the Windows XP operating system. A combination of untrained teachers and parental attitudes is being blamed for a decline in the number of programmers in the country. I know of one Auckland-based technology centre where the majority of hands-on coders are predominantly recruited from overseas and incidentally - unlike the less-technical roles - are mostly men. Of course, the shortage could be partly due to the enticement of kiwi developers to the far larger and better-paid job markets in Australia, the UK and USA, but even so it seems clear that there is a definitive deficiency in New Zealand-born programmers.

Luckily, programming is a discipline where motivated children can learn coding for free, with online resources provided by numerous companies all the way up to Google and Microsoft. However, this presupposes both adequate internet access and parental support, or at least approval. If the current generation of parents don't understand the value of the subject, then it's highly unlikely many children will pick up the bug (ahem, that's a programming pun, of sorts.)

Compared to the BASIC and Logo languages available in my teenage years there is now a bewildering array of computer languages, interfaces and projects that teach the rudiments of programming, with colourful audio-visual interfaces such as Alice, Scratch (a bit like a virtual lego), CiMPLE, Kodu, etc, all intended for a pre-teen audience. Of course, they are far removed from complexity of professional languages such as the C family or Java - I have to say that Object-Orientated Programming was certainly a bit of a shock for me - but these applications are more about whetting the appetite and generating quick results so as to maintain interest.

So what are the reasons why learning to code might be a good idea for young children, rather than just teaching them to use software such as the ubiquitous Microsoft Office? Might not the first three or four years at school be better spent learning the traditional basics of reading, writing and arithmetic? After all, this period is crucial to gaining the frameworks of grammar and mathematics, which in their own way provide a solid background for some of the key elements of coding such as syntax, operators and of course spelling!

Apart from the obvious notion that the demand for programmers is likely to increase in the next generation, not just for computers and touch devices, but for all sorts of consumer items from cars to watches (at least until computers become sophisticated enough -and fast enough - for programming in everyday language) there are benefits and skills useful in the wider world. The following reasons are probably just the tip of the iceberg:

• It exercises the mind, sharpening analytical thinking and trouble-shooting abilities
• Coding can be thought of as akin to learning a foreign language or how to read music, so may hone those skills
• Programming can generate a fruitful combination of creative and mathematical skills, which is difficult to obtain in most other subjects
• This is the age of information economies, so programming is the largest employment growth sector in much of the developed world.

One worrying trend is the decline in the number of female programmers over the past quarter century. Perhaps this isn't surprising in the game coding field, considering that the vast majority of its themes are centered on the military and fantasy violence. But then doesn't this extremely popular, highly visible and decidedly lucrative sector of contemporary computing bolster the notion widespread among women that leisure-time computing is primarily the domain of socially-inadequate young men?

Research suggests that women consider computers as a tool to aid numerous disciplines whilst men look upon them more as an end in themselves. Surely learning to use them in-depth at an early age could help achieve a more liberal attitude from either extreme? Computers - and indeed the increasing number of programmable consumer devices - are not going away any time soon. If the near future of humanity will rely ever more closely on interfacing with these machines, then shouldn't as many of us as possible gain some understanding of what goes on 'under the hood'? After all, there has to be someone out there who can make a less buggy operating system than Windows 10!