Kids As Young As Four Should Get Basic Robot, Programming Knowledge At School, Experts Suggest

A first of its kind study by an Australian education researcher suggests kids as young as four can learn basic robot and programming knowledge at school.

It has become very critical for kids to start learning to code at an early age, with demand for programmers in the field of medicine, manufacturing, and agriculture expected to increase in future. As use of artificial intelligence is increasing at a fast pace, it's important to ensure that next generation kids are smart enough to handle them.

To make sure that kids are known to the newest technological advances, it's necessary to generate interest in them right from an early age.

"It is really important that children have these skills early in life but we need to make it fun for them and think about how they can be creative," said Christina Chalmers from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia. Chalmers is a leading authority on the application of robotics in classrooms.

As part of the study, NAO robots has already been added to two schools in South Australia. In fact, Queensland has also implemented compulsory coding and robotics in primary and early secondary schools last year.

"Coding is basically telling a computer what you want it to do through step-by-step commands," Chalmers added. "Robotics activities are very effective because they are hands-on and students get immediate feedback on whether their robot and program works or not."

The education researcher said that preliminary findings from a current study have proved that 4-year-old pre-school students have gone beyond playing games with a NAO robot to draw pictures of their 'robot' classmate and explain how the robot received its coded messages wirelessly. The whole thing involved complex conceptual thinking by 4-year-olds about how the robot's behavior was being controlled.

It is believed that the idea of teaching robots and complex coding to kids as young as four could help them to learn better in the long run.

"It arouses students' curiosity in a way that fosters problem-solving... They are allowed and even at times encouraged to fail in order to work out what went wrong and learn from their failures and share and develop their ideas with other students," said Chalmers.

She added that according to a research if kids do not get interest in science, maths and technology from an early age, they might find it difficult to learn the subjects later on.