School teachers from the Karelia region (Finland) and the St. Petersburg region (Russia) will soon be able to integrate Industry 4.0 topics – from robotics, to 3D printing, to Internet-of-Things, to programming – to their programs.
This program is a joint effort of Lappeenranta and Lahti University of Technology (LUT University), St. Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU), the Lappeenranta city administration, with participation from Russian educational robotics startup Robbo.
Through 54 webinars, more than 1,000 school teachers will get acquainted with a specially-designed teaching methodology covering robotics, IoT, additive technologies and cyber-physical systems .
Meanwhile, Robbo will provide the schools with such equipment as “roboplatforms,” “lab-based IoT kits” and a 3D-printer – 330 devices in total.
Two thousand Finnish and Russian children are expected to participate in a variety of activities – from demonstration lessons, to workshops, to competitions and contests.
Starting in March 2020, the program will last for three years. It is backed by a €530,000 grant, provided in the framework of South East Finland-Russia cross-border cooperation program 2014-2020. This program is co-funded by the European Union, the Russian Federation and the Republic of Finland.
Russian robotics kits around the world
“It is obvious today that robotics and programming lessons should be added to school curricula,” Robbo’s founder Pavel Frolov told East-West Digital News. “Our experience, however, shows that this process is usually very slow and challenging for schools: while teachers have to study up the subject on their own almost from scratch, there is no system approach and common methodology of teaching.”
The Russian-Finnish program was designed to address these issues. Robbo, which established a representative office in Finland five years ago, has already sold learning equipment to 55 Finnish schools to date.
The startup claims to be active in 17 countries in total, including the the USA, China, Western Europe and republics of the former Soviet Union.
Robbo has high ambitions in Japan, too. Last year the company won a government tender, ‘Fukuoka Startup,’ and successfully tested its products in Japanese schools, as reported by TAdviser. After signing a distribution agreement, Robbo expects to deliver €500,000 worth of devices in 2020 and considers developing joint R&D activities in the country.
Founded in the early 2000s, Robbo was initially known as ‘ScratchDuino.’ In 2013-2014, the St. Petersburg-based company won two Google RISE Awards. It also won contests in Finland, Japan and St. Petersburg, being recognized there as the “Best Social Project 2018”.
In 2019, Robbo generated around €2 million in revenues, up 100% from 2018, Frolov told EWDN.
