He’s is cute and quirky with an adorable personality. He can step forwards, backwards, side-to-side and turn - and dance the African shuffle. Meet Marty, a programmable robot that helps children learn how to code. Twelve Kigali primary school kids will demonstrate their coding skills with Marty during Transform Africa May 14-17, 2019.
Learning how to code is like learning a new language, a computer language. And we all know how much easier it is to learn when you are young, right?
Marty was designed with the intention of making programming fun and to let kids get acquainted with robotics in a playful way.
"The Rwandan government has marked STEM as a priority in education, but many children in our school system lose interest in science because they don’t have access to the right tools”, Benjamin Karenzi from Robotical Africa explains.
"If Rwanda is to achieve its long-term vision of digital transformation, we need to fix the problem in the classrooms. Marty the Robot can really add value and transform the way ICT is taught in schools so kids can learn by doing.”
Marty comes with a rich online educational kit for teachers that bring the robot and computers together in the classroom and introduces children to fundamentals such as programming, electronics and robotics.