The Minister of Education and Merit, Joseph Vallettara, together with the President of Assolombarda Alessandro Spada, visited RoboLab, thethe only educational laboratory in Italy with latest generation collaborative robots, active in the Association's branch office, in via Damiano Chiesa 3 in Monza.
RoboLab offers young people the opportunity to experiment with practical paths which make STEM subjects more concrete, fascinating and applicable, thus contributing to enhancing these disciplines.
"RoboLab is an extremely fascinating reality and fully responds to the Ministry's guidelines regarding the reforms of STEM subjects, orientation and technical and professional institutes - he declared Joseph Vallettara, Minister of Education and Merit -. The kids I met convey passion, enthusiasm and the desire to build something beautiful: this is the greatest antidote against school dropout, bullying and all those attitudes that are stigmatized in the news every day."
The RoboLab project
RoboLab is a Assolombarda project, created with the support of the Camerani Pintaldi Foundation and the scientific contribution of the Polytechnic of Milan. The project focuses on several objectives, including promotion of scientific-technological culture and STEM disciplines, with particular attention to female students, orientation towards ITS (Higher Technical Institutes) courses and the development of transversal digital skills essential for the world of work.
So far, more than 3.000 students and over a hundred teachers from lower and upper secondary schools had the opportunity to experiment with an innovative teaching approach thanks to the use of industrial collaborative robots, humanoid robots, vision tools, robotic kits for learning programming, thermal cameras and Factory Industry 4.0 training stations.
Assolombarda and the theme of innovation
The RoboLab initiative is part of a larger one broad reflection by Assolombarda on innovation of teaching methodologies and learning spaces. This reflection led to the elaboration of guidelines to create innovative and sustainable school infrastructures, call “Space for the Education of the Future.” The document proposes a systematic method for improving school structures and was initially tested at the Torricelli Institute in Milan.
"We need to strengthen the orientation of young people towards technical-scientific subjects to deal with the mismatch between job supply and demand. It is a real emergency: today one profile in two cannot be found by companies, especially technicians and operators involved in the production processes – he declared Alessandro Spada, President of Assolombarda -. Introducing young people to these subjects is one of the RoboLab objectives, a national excellence. Here students can learn STEM subjects in the field in an innovative way and orient themselves in subsequent school choices with greater awareness of these disciplines. The strong one indicative value of RoboLab it is also fully aligned with the guidelines recently launched by Minister Valditara, which configure a new vision of orientation as a systemic activity, where all local actors can play their part in a collaborative logic. Similarly, the reform of technical and professional institutes proposed by Minister Valditara goes in the right direction: it recognizes full dignity and prestige to the entire technical and professional education chain, enhances collaboration with the production system and strengthens the continuation of studies towards ITS after obtaining the diploma with the '4 + 2 years' model. The priority now is to get the message across training in the technical and professional field is of the same level as that of high school. In this regard, we are working with the Ministry and the Lombardy Region to create the City of Technology at MIND: an innovative hub in which the Milanese ITS will be based and in which to find the entire technical and professional training chain aimed at training young people with the necessary skills to allow companies to accompany the ecological and digital transitions".
