The tour that inspires fifth-graders about technology

The Technology Scouts is a tour created by Teknikföretagen (The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries) to inspire Swedish eleven year-olds to choose technical educations in the future. Using LEGO robots the touring informers give the students an insight into working in modern Swedish industry today. 2004 Iteam was awarded the IDG magazine IT.Branschen's Sirius Prize for the technical solution that in a simple, educational and reliable way lets the students create complex programs for the LEGO robots, still keeping it mobile and sturdy enough to allow packing and unpacking and the handling of thousands of eleven year-olds during the three years of the tour.

The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries gathers Sweden's 3000 most important technology companies. A critical issue is the future supply of competence - in essence making sure that enough young people choose technical educations and careers. The Association of Swedish Engineering Industries commissioned Iteam along with PR-agency Springtime, web developers Jaywalk, graphic designer Jenny Bisander and industrial designers No Picnic to develop a tour based on LEGO robots, aimed at Swedish eleven year-olds.

Iteam developed the technical solution for the tour. Each tour team brings six laptops pre-installed with the educational software, whose Flash-based interface was developed by Jaywalk. The application takes the students through a step-by-step process to develop an intelligent appliance that does a better job cleaning than the vaccuum cleaner. When the student group has chosen a strategy and has assembled their robot according to the on-screen instructions of the program the robot is programmed to clean up a model of room. The programming is don by dragging and dropping boxes, such as "drive forward" or "go forward to the line in the room", in the order they are to be carried out. The educational application then translates the boxex to the programming language used in the robots' control boxes and transmits the program to the robot using IR. Iteam was also responsible for developing the concept for the LEGO robots along with the cleaning tools they can be equipped with as well as the model room.

In 2004 IDG-magazine IT.branschen awarded Iteam with the Sirius prize for the Technology Scouts, with the motivation: "The project has been able to combine machine language at the lowest level, with a modern middleware handling the logic and a user interface that stimulates using technology. That the solution also is extremely reliable is a large advantage. The project shows that technology is stimulating, fun and useful in real life, when combined with good pedagogy".