MindHub Romania: 1,000 children and teenagers in Romania learned programming with games and robots in 2020

MindHub Romania, part of the international network of programming courses for children and adolescents of the same name, considers that more and more children today are interested in acquiring digital skills, which helps them enormously in building long-term skills. career requirements. They are supported by parents who are aware that these kinds of skills are essential to prepare the little ones for the jobs of the future.

MindHub, the programming network dedicated to children and adolescents between 6 and 16 years old, present locally since 2019, observes very similarities between Romanian children and those from other European countries in which it operates, having the same skills and interests. No matter where they come from, they are in love with technology, computers, tablets and, above all, robots. In the last year, parents have realized that the extra time children spend at home should be capitalized on and have begun to focus on transferring these natural interests of the little ones to developing the digital skills needed for future jobs.

“2020 has been a year full of challenges and with a huge impact on many businesses, including ours. A year ago we managed to transfer online all the courses in the portfolio. Absolutely all MindHub students learned online in the first months of the pandemic, and the trainers managed to adapt their classes to the new teaching format. From the very beginning, the children learned how to work and collaborate in virtual classes. The online courses were designed in such a way as to reproduce the offline atmosphere as accurately as possible, and the students were very excited. The academy currently offers both online and offline courses, with strict physical distance measures and all other precautions needed to minimize risks to children and staff. Pandemic it has helped us to approach new educational methods and tools, and digitalization is now perceived as a natural tool for learning, ”says Polly Yankova, founder of the MindHub network.

1,000 children and adolescents in Romania have learned to program with the help of games and robots in 2020

The development of MindHub in Romania overlapped with the pandemic period, with the organization opening half of its schools after March 2020. To date, approximately 1,000 children and young people have attended its programming courses. The academy plans to double the number of students this year, but also to increase the number of trainers in schools to 60 mentors. We plan to increase the network of centers in Romania with seven new locations by the end of 2021.

Moreover, we intend to diversify our courses for teenagers (age category 10-15 years), and from 2022, to introduce and courses for a new segment – young people aged 16-18. The latter will be professional, specialization courses, addressed to young people who are going to choose their career “, added Polly Yankova. Most parents prefer to enroll their children in offline courses, but we work in hybrid mode. We are ready to stay 100% online, if the legislation and the times will impose it According to the academy, most parents currently prefer offline courses for the little ones, for various reasons: children have the opportunity to socialize with each other, to learn and play with their favorite devices, especially robots, frequently used by the academy during classes, but also because, in this way, adults manage to carry out various other activities while the children are present in the classrooms.

Moreover, parents in Romania are worried about the quality of online education in state schools, considering that the classes taught in this way are deficient, point out the experts of the academy.

“That’s why we offer parents the opportunity to participate in online trial lessons, to convince themselves how trainers manage to attract the little ones and work very well with them, even from a distance. We do not see online as a barrier to a good education – on the contrary, we have taken all necessary steps to ensure that we can bring the benefits of programming education to an even greater number of children, regardless of their physical location. which are also constrained, helping them to learn and further develop their skills even in this difficult context, “said the founder of the MindHub network.

The courses are taught in Romanian and focus mainly on the development of logical and analytical thinking of children, which helps the latter to solve problems in real situations. Through programming languages, the secrets of which they learn from the age of six, and as they learn to develop their own games, children become focused on what they are doing and manage to stay excited to carry out their tasks. at the end. In fact, by learning how to program robots for different activities, children notice how their programs are implemented in a real environment. Most of the organization’s students are currently between 6 and 11 years old. The programming courses given by 35 mentors in centers from all over Romania take place, at this moment, both online and face-to-face, the academy operating in a hybrid system. If the health situation and the authorities request it, MindHub is ready to move all classes entirely online.

MindHub is an international network of programming courses for children and adolescents. The network started in Bulgaria, expanding to Europe and the USA in a franchise system.

Currently, MindHub operates over 40 centers in nine countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Belgium, Finland, Estonia, Macedonia, Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA. In Romania, MindHub has been present since 2019, and today it has eight locations in Bucharest, Bragadiru (Ilfov), Brașov, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Timișoara, Șimleu Silvaniei, as well as an online course center. MindHub helps children master the fundamentals of digital skills, teaching programming in a friendly and child-friendly way, which increases their interest in technology.

Network courses use a variety of tools, games and environments, which help them learn with great interest. These include Minecraft, Dash & Dot, Sphero, Scratch, Tynker, Hopscotch, Micro: bit, Roblox, KODU and HTML, CSS and Python – for teenagers.