National Coding Week
Bee-Bots have appeared as pirates, police cars and monkeys. They have taken part in the Olympics, The Euros and even Strictly. To celebrate 20 years of service to hard pressed teachers, TTS, the company that created them, is bringing out a limited edition of Golden Bots.
Jo Hardy is Director of Innovation at RM. She explained how the Bee-Bot came about. ‘When teachers were asked to teach directional language as part of computing, there were Roamers, Turtles and Big Trak. Often, they were too complex for young children.’ More to the point, it was hard for children to be sure that the robot was moving forwards. Enterprising teachers were solving the problem by sticking googly eyes on the front so everyone could see which way the robot was facing.
The developers at TTS, now part of the RM group, talked to teachers and discovered that early years settings did not use many of the functions on offer. Together they designed a simpler version which would just go forwards, backwards, left and right. It was yellow and black and looked like a bee. It had big eyes and could do 90 degree turns and it turned out to be a winner. The Bee-Bot has been used in 95% of UK schools and has been exported to 90 countries.
To mark its 20th anniversary, TeachingTimes talked to two primary experts who have made good use of Bee-Bots in the classroom to teach computational thinking.
First steps in coding
Lee Parkison @ICT_MrP said: ‘There are not many resources that have lasted longer than I've been in teaching! Often, just as you get your head around how something works, everything changes. Bee-Bots have stood the test of time and that in itself is quite a remarkable achievement. It's a nice way of putting in those building blocks, developing computational thinking and laying the foundations for the computer science curriculum.’