Playful learning can build a creative future

Play to create was the theme of this year’s LEGO® Idea Conference held in Denmark this week. More than 300 people attended the one-day session organised by the LEGO Idea House and The LEGO Foundation – whose aim is to inspire the builders of tomorrow.

Randa Grob-Zakhary, CEO of The LEGO Foundation kicked off the event talking about how we can apply creativity to the world’s biggest challenges. She said that creativity is about openness to new ideas and tolerance of ambiguity, not just about the arts.

Other speakers included Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, founder of soleRebels in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, who talked about innovating the future by embracing the past, and Kiran Bir Sethi, founder of the Riverside School in Gujarat in India, who spoke of empowering children to be agents of change.

There were also hands-on workshops focusing on a variety of activities, including using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education and the LEGO® Serious Play method.

The day ended with the award of the 2013 LEGO Prize which was given to Right To Play CEO Johann Koss.

Right To Play is a global organisation that uses play to educate and empower children facing adversity. The LEGO Prize carries a $100,000 prize and is awarded to individuals and institutions that have made an extraordinary contribution on behalf of children and young people.

“Johann Koss is awarded the LEGO Prize 2013 as recognition of the tremendous impact he has had on children’s lives through his organization, Right To Play,” says Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Chairman of the LEGO Foundation and principal shareholder of the family-owned LEGO Group.

“Since 1993 he has been dedicated to helping vulnerable and disadvantaged children and young people to a better future using play and sport as a tool for education and health. Right To Play has shared values and overlapping aims with The LEGO Foundation that works to equip and empower children to build a better tomorrow for themselves and their communities through higher quality learning experiences.”

Right To Play reaches one million children through weekly play activities across more than 20 countries. The organisation’s programs use specially-designed games and play-based learning activities to help children build the essential life skills that will help them better their futures and drive lasting social change.

“Play is not a luxury,” says Koss. “Every child has the right to play, not only because it is fun, but because it is critical to their education and healthy development. We share that belief and commitment to children’s well-being with The LEGO Foundation and The LEGO Group, which has been providing children with play material that help them learn and grow for more than 80 years. It is a great honour to have Right To Play’s work recognised by such an iconic play brand and we are very grateful for this prize.”

Inspire your class with LEGO® brick art!

If you thought LEGO® bricks were just for building houses and towers, then think again. An exhibition called The Art of the Brick® shows some of the amazing things that can be done with LEGO!

T-Rex by Nathan Sawaya

The touring exhibition, currently on show in Singapore and the US, is the work of renowned contemporary artist Nathan Sawaya, formerly a New York attorney but now a full-time independent artist and LEGO Certified Professional.

Nathan says: “I experimented with other more traditional types of art media, I did sculptures out of clay and wire, but eventually I just thought about this toy from childhood and I challenged myself: could I create large-scale sculptures using this childhood toy?

“I wanted to use those rectangular bricks to create something more – not just what was on the front of the box, not just cars and trucks, but really use them to create some emotional sculptures.

“I focused on using LEGO to create these human forms and really put some emotion into it and take LEGO bricks out of the toy store and into the contemporary art world.”

The exhibition currently at ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, showcases 52 sculptures including the iconic sculpture Yellow (behind Nathan in the picture, right) and a 6-metre long T-Rex dinosaur skeleton (pictured above).

Nathan is the only person in the world who has been both a LEGO Master Model Builder and a LEGO Certified Professional. He builds daily, his art is sold in prominent galleries and he accepts commission work. The Art of the Brick exhibition was first created in 2007 and has visited galleries and museums across America, Asia and Australia. You can hear him talking about his work in this video on YouTube.

For more of Nathan’s amazing work and tour details, visit his website. For more about the Singapore exhibition, visit the museum website.

Why not ask your class to create a human form using LEGO bricks? Then share your creations with other teachers on the Creative Classroom on Rebrick.

A bright idea to teach RE!

Have you ever thought of using LEGO® to teach Religious Education? Year 1 class teacher Sarah Thomas did just that and shares her experience here.

At Charles Darwin Community Primary School in Northwich, Cheshire, we’re always looking for ways to make lessons more interactive, more fun and more memorable. What better way to do that than to promote LEGO from being a wet play treat to an integral part of lessons?

I recently used LEGO to teach our Year 1 children about the Christian Creation Story in RE. It was so easy to do, didn’t require any fancy LEGO – just a standard set – and ticked lots of boxes!

The children made models to represent the sun and moon for Day 1, then when God created the land they used a green baseplate and added features to it as the days went on; Day 4 – God made the trees and the flowers, Day 5 – God made the animals and the fish and Day 6 – God made Adam and Eve ( two LEGO Minifigures).

When the model was complete for each stage, the children took a photo (a bit of ICT in there too!) and we used these to create a display in the classroom. The children loved adding the features and could make their own animals etc and the idea of adding bits on represented the Creation Story perfectly.

One month on and they can all still recount the story, which I’m sure wouldn’t be the case if I’d shown them a PowerPoint or drawn pictures. Give it a go in your classroom!

Inspire your pupils to become LEGO designers!

Why not inspire your pupils to become the designers of the future by entering the first-ever competition to create a new body for the LEGO® Technic 4×4 Crawler?

The winning competition entry will be used to produce and launch an exclusive, limited edition LEGO Technic set available for sale online!

To create a winning design, you need to research and plan, looking at real-life vehicles. Then you need to consider issues such as what makes a design great? Who will want to buy it? Can it be built using Technic elements?

You can upload your design until 31 December 2012. The LEGO Technic Jury will announce a shortlist of ten designs soon afterwards based on the following criteria:

• Overall coolness
• Inspired design details
• Design that people will purchase
• A great colour scheme
• Buildable using existing LEGO Technic elements
• Well thought out functions
• The relationship between your age and your design

People will be able to vote online for their favourite short-listed design and the winning 4×4 Crawler design will be announced on 22 February, with the officially worldwide launch of the product on 1 August 2013.

For more information about the competition and helpful tips on how to start researching and planning your design, click here. To see some of the amazing entries so far, click here.

Revealed: the secrets of a record-breaking Rubik’s Cube solver

Take a look at the Rubik’s Cube solver that has made it into the 2013 book of Guinness World Records. 

Engineer David Gilday and his co-creater Mike Dobson joined forces to build the CubeStormer II using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT for the mechanics and a smartphone for the brain. On this video he gives a fascinating insight into how the CubeStormer II was developed.

David is a Principal Engineer at ARM, which develops digital electronic products. He has always been a fan of LEGO and the Rubik’s Cube, so started to work on ways to create a puzzle solver using LEGO.

He teamed up with Mike to work on the CubeStormer II and created an app for the ARM-powered smartphone which uses a camera to take pictures and calculate a solution to the puzzle. This solution is sent to an ARM processor in the NXT brick which controls the motors to physically solve the cube.

The CubeStormer II managed to solve the Rubik’s Cube in 5.270 seconds to become the fastest robot to solve a Rubik’s Cube. The achievement can be seen in the 2013 edition of the Guinness World Records book which is out now.

See videos of CubeStormer II and other ARM-powered LEGO Rubik’s Cube robot solvers here and why not let us know what you can do with LEGO MINDSTORMS?

LEGO® Minifigures inspire young artists

LEGO® Minifigures have been inspiring children in a US school to create unique self-portraits.

By Sam5661

by Jacob22454

By Lauren12195

By Samantha12709

Students in the Sixth Grade (UK Year Seven) at Sandburg Middle School drew pictures of themselves in the likeness of the iconic Minifigures. More of the children’s fantastic work can be seen here.

The idea was the brainchild of art teacher Jennifer Leban who writes a weekly blog on the activities and art work of the children in the 690-pupil school in Elmhurst, Ilinois.

Why not try this idea with your class? Using LEGO Minifigures is a great way to capture the imagination of your pupils and start lively discussions exploring issues such as identity and community. Let us know how you get on.

If you’ve found an unusual way of using LEGO in your classroom, we’d love to hear from you. And for more inspiration and information, visit the LEGO Education website.

Inspire your students with amazing LEGO® creations

We know inspiration can be found in many different ways and that seeing something differently can often trigger a whole new way of thinking.

How many of your students would be inspired if they saw an idea, concept or event created from LEGO® bricks and elements? What may seem like a small pile of plastic pieces can be used to build a vast array of creations – the possibilities are limitless!

Creative Classroom

There are a huge number of talented individuals across the World who are building with LEGO and capturing the results as photos or videos. Rebrick is a social media platform designed to make sharing and bookmarking these creations as easy as possible. Simply use tags and categories to find and bookmark the content that interests you and your students most.

To help teachers further, LEGO Education has created a Creative Classroom community section within Rebrick. This collates all of the great projects and ideas we and other teachers have seen across the internet. This can be anything from using LEGO® MINDSTORMS® in class to historical scenes to science exhibits to awesome architecture.

The Creative Classroom community is there for you. Find out what interests other teachers, join the conversation yourself and inspire your students.

• Find out more about Rebrick
• Visit the Creative Classroom
• Explore the rest of Rebrick

Olympic Park built from LEGO® bricks

With Olympic fever gripping the world, Warren Elsmore has created a miniature version of the Olympic Park made entirely from LEGO® bricks and elements.

The Park is constructed from approximately a quarter of a million bricks and took 300 hours to build. Take a look at a time lapse video of the Park being built below and more pictures on Londonist where the article was originally posted.

Have you had Instant Success with LEGO® DUPLO® in your nursery?

Most children love to play with LEGO® DUPLO® products – they’re ideal for small hands, hard wearing and safe plus they bring lots of fun to play.

At LEGO® Education we’re keen to help you get the most out of your resources and to help you to use them not only for just free play but also to deliver key areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage.

To inspire you we have designed a free booklet for you to download that provides a whole range of ideas that you can use to deliver the key areas.

It covers the key areas of:

• Communication, Language & Literacy
• Problem-solving, Reasoning & Numeracy
• Knowledge & Understanding of the World
• Creative Development
• Personal, Social & Emotional Development
• Physical Development

So why not download the brochure now and start getting even more out or your LEGO DUPLO resources? We’re sure you will have as much fun using them as the children!

More ideas?

We would love to put together our next booklet with ideas from you – so if you have any ideas to share then please email them to marketing@LEGOeducation.eu . We will put the best ones on the blog and for the person with the top idea each month we will give them £50 worth of LEGO® Education vouchers. We’ll then collate all the best ideas and put them together in a booklet to share. We look forward to hearing from you!

Facing the challenges that a computer science curriculum will bring

Professor Dave Cohen of the Royal Holloway University, who uses LEGO® MINDSTORMS hardware to support his first year robotics course in the computer science department, offered some helpful tips to teachers on Wednesday in a talk about how to address the new curriculum demands to teach computer science.

“Programming is to IT as maths is to engineering,” he said, but what IT has traditionally done in schools is teach students how to use existing software packages effectively. In the future he says, students will need to understand the science of programming, i.e writing code to make computers solve problems.

He says schools will need to address the following basics:

1. Principles of programming languages: How programs work.
2. Understand how computers run programs: What computers do with programs.
3. Understand how to add a new program to a computer: How to create a program from source code.
4. Understand how to use simple programming tools: Use programming environments.

Dave believes that even though only a minority of pupils is likely to choose computer science at university, teachers can make the subject fun and relevant for whole classes. He demonstrated how LEGO® MINDSTORMS and NXT or Scratch software programs make programming simple and appealing for students and recommended websites such as nxtprograms.com for lesson activity ideas. “Show the robot to anyone between 5 and 85 and they will say “I want to do that!” he said.

He also offered an example of how writing a program of instructions for how to lift a glass of water to your mouth can provide a fun introduction to the significance of good programming skills, without even the need for a computer!

Dave gave his talk in a breakout session during the SATRO Festival of Science and Engineering at Brooklands Museum, Surrey. The festival brings together students and teachers, industry, commerce and professional bodies to celebrate and award GCSE, GNVQ, Diploma and A level science and engineering projects.

Photos by SATRO on Flickr