LEGO® Education BricQ Motion and LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime are an Investment in Skills At Fulham School
Brendan O’Keeffe is the Head of Digital Learning at Fulham School in London, part of the Inspired Schools Group serving 50,000 students in 70 schools on 5 continents. About a year and a half ago he took over the computer department and began looking at what he calls, “a really interesting kaleidoscope of exciting but fragmented ideas” making up the existing curriculum. What he found was really good content but not a lot of connection from year to year. It was missing a clean thread, something that would pull students through a progression of skills and knowledge, keeping them engaged and excited about STEAM subjects. That’s the lens that helped him to decide that LEGO® Education BricQ Motion Essential, LEGO® Education BricQ Motion Prime and LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Prime were the perfect place to start.
Three key factors made the decision an easy one:
The familiarity and name recognition that come with a solution based on LEGO® bricks. “You can’t discount that recognition from children and even the adults. “LEGO has good robotics street cred!” said O’Keeffe. He went on to say that in many ways the BricQ Motion sets were the perfect springboard for his students to try ideas and take risks comfortably because they could say, “I know LEGO – if things go wrong, it’s fine, I can start from scratch, I can rebuild, I can adapt.”
The online resources and lessons that offer the potential for easy scalability. The videos, lesson plans, and other content that come with the sets were a big deal for O’Keeffe, who designed the new curriculum to be piloted in his school with the idea of it being rolled out across multiple schools in Europe.“ There’s a huge wealth of resources that creates a nice safety net for teachers, which in turn encourages greater learning confidence across the board.” In order to develop confident students you need confident teachers and O’Keeffe says that’s what the online resources provide.
The sets themselves, the thought that went into what’s in the box and what the potential outcomes are based on. “The sets provide everything that our children need, with masses of future content available at the click of a mouse.”, says O’Keeffe. Apart from the physical elements he also pointed to the inclusive color palette of SPIKE Prime in particular, as evidence of the thought that went into making it a universally accessible and inviting tool. “All of the kids have loved the look and feel of the sets immediately – the sets really open things up for as many children as possible”says O’Keeffe.
