This Tuesday morning (12) was full of new discoveries for students at Escola Municipal Santa Luzia, in Capoeiras, a rural area in the municipality of Macaíba. Students from Level 3 to 5th year of elementary school participated in robotics workshops, activities on the electrical action of the brain and memory studies guided by Scientific Initiation researchers, master's students and residents of the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD), a linked social organization to the Ministry of Education.
The action is part of ISD's Brain Week, held from March 12th to 14th, whose objective is to disseminate, educate and stimulate interest in the human brain. The initiative counts with the support of Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and Dana Foundation.
ISD Scientific Initiation researcher, Gabriel Borges, led the robotics workshop for 1st year elementary school students. Children were introduced to educational robots created to assist in the rehabilitation of patients. After a brief orientation on how the technology works, students applied commands and performed handling activities with the machines, which resemble remote-controlled carts.
“Through interactions and racing competitions with educational robots, children, who have never seen programming concepts, use their creativity to follow commands in blocks and learn, without realizing it, logic concepts”, explains Gabriel.
Rosemary Cristina de Oliveira teaches 1st and 2nd year classes. For a few hours, the teacher gave up the classroom to the robotics workshop, but closely followed the ISD researchers' entire explanation on the subject. An opportunity for new learning for her too. “It’s a moment these boys won’t forget. They will forever remember this morning, what was taught. If we, who are adults, are enchanted by these robots, imagine them, right?”
The director of the Santa Luzia Municipal School, Antônio Moreira de Lima, hopes that the initiative will be repeated more often and hopes that, in the future, the boys and girls of Capoeiras become great scientists. “We want to welcome researchers from the Santos Dumont Institute here at our school more often so that they can serve as an inspiration for our students. The doors are always open to knowledge”, he reinforced.
As far as José Heitor, a first-year student of just 6 years old, is concerned, the path to a future focused on scientific development has already begun. He participated in the robotics workshop and in an experiment to understand how the brain's electrical activity works through interaction with a machine. He liked both, but preferred the robotics one because “it looks like a toy car”, he summed up.
ISD Brain Week activities continue this Wednesday (13) and Thursday (14). On Wednesday, students from the Alfredo Mesquita Filho Rural Education Center School will participate in workshops at the Spatial Technological Vocational Center, at the Barreira do Inferno Launch Center (CLBI), in Parnamirim. On the 14th, the event's audience will be made up of users and collaborators from the Santos Dumont Institute (ISD), at the Health Education and Research Center, Anita Garibaldi, in the rural area of Macaíba. The activities will take place exclusively in the morning, starting at 8:30 am.
ABOUT ISD
The Santos Dumont Institute (ISD) is a Social Organization linked to the Ministry of Education (MEC) and includes the Edmond and Lily Safra International Neuroscience Institute and the Anita Garibaldi Center for Health Education and Research, both in Macaíba. ISD's mission is to promote education for life, forming citizens through integrated teaching, research and extension actions, in addition to contributing to a fairer and more humane transformation of Brazilian social reality.
