Computer technology is a ubiquitous part of our society, and so it’s increasingly important for younger generations to become both competent users — as well as good stewards — of technological platforms. In our program, students will gain experiential knowledge of computing and discover how code underpins all digital applications. This understanding, coupled with hands-on robotics exploration, will give students the opportunity to write real software and implement it through purposeful interaction with the physical world.

In building this foundation, your child will mature beyond a passive point-and-touch relationship with technology, as he or she becomes an active learner and developer in the digital landscape. Using the iRobot Root technology — first developed at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for the purpose of teaching children how to write code — students will develop a foundation for software engineering through a process of successive steps, initially using a graphical interface to control a robot’s basic movements and later advancing to language-specific code to perform more complicated tasks. This approach allows students to better absorb abstract coding principles, as the consequences of each line of code are made concrete to them in a real-time environment through the algorithmically articulated motions of the Root robot.