Coding Express is our new creative, intuitive and versatile solution that will inspire  early learners to explore early coding concepts while also developing critical 21st century skills such as confidence, creativity and collaboration. The new action bricks will make the train come to life as the children place them around the tracks to sound the horn, turn the lights on and off, pause and refuel, change direction and stop the train. The solution includes teacher material developed to inspire educators to help children understand basic early coding concepts, such as sequencing, looping and conditional coding. 

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Robotics is hands-on and offers exposure to mechanical design, electronics, and programming, all of which are critical STEM skills.  Kids can learn skills in leadership, community involvement, communicating across various technology platforms,finding their passions, teamwork, which will position them for achievement well beyond their school years. Coding Express is our new creative, intuitive and versatile solution that will inspire early learners to explore early coding concepts while also developing critical 21st century skills such as confidence, creativity and collaboration.
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In my opinion, there are many things that we can teach young children by using lego NXT robots. Firstly, we have to define how the NXT robot works. Since lego is something colourful, it will automatically attract children to play and gain their interest. A part of building the robot, it involves the young children creativity skills. At the same time, I can also teach them about programming and how the robot follow the command based on the programming that has been created in the robot. As an example, the movement of the robot (forward, reverse, curve turns). Besides, young children are also slowly exposed to coding and programming. It gets difficult at first try but the result will make the children amaze and enjoy. Building a robot creates a good bonding and team work among players. For an example, when a task is given it require them to communicate and creative thinking. Furthermore, kids can learn mechanical techniques that also involves in technology. A time that spent when building the robot is actually learning about design and structures. Lastly, science and mathematics took the biggest part in this like how the robot rotates the wheels based to the requested distance.

The additional framework written specifically for the module provided a wrapper around the more complex functionality required and hid the event-handling code (which was beyond the scope of what was covered in the module) within a utility class which could be incorporated into a BlueJ project and accessed via simple method calls. This framework meant that the students could be provided with an initial template from which to develop their own programs and some simple instructions on how to incorporate specific robot commands. A series of robot programs were devised and mapped onto particular module content as listed below:

RobotWalk (basic motion and conditional statements): Robot is moved by pressing the touch sensor and stopped by releasing it. Buttons on the control panel itself determine whether the robot moves forward or backward.

Coward (loop statements): Robot moves forwards continuously poling the ultrasonic sensor. When it senses an object within 10cm that it may crash into it reverses and turns away.

Defender (loop statements and methods): Robot rotates, continually poling the ultrasonic sensor for an object within 10cm. When an object is detected it moves quickly forwards, pushing the object out of range and then returns to its starting point (i.e. defends its territory!).

Reverser (arrays and random numbers): Robot moves in a series of steps at random speed, direction and distance. The movement is stored so that, once complete, the robot can retrace its steps and return to the starting point.

FileReverser (file handling): As for Reverser but with actions being stored in a file. [This challenge was abandoned prior to showing it to the students due to difficulties in implementing file handling on the robot and the requirement for code structures not covered in the module].

The module ran twice during the 2008/9 academic year for two different cohorts of students. The first cohort (L1 Term 2) consisted of 56 students from BSc Computing and BSc Network Computing; the second cohort (L1 Term 3) consisted of 16 students, primarily from BSc Forensic Computing; with Joint Honours students attending whichever cohort fit best into their timetable.