Orange Electric Company teaches Robotics to students
View(s):In a small classroom in a school located alongside Cotta Road in Borella, a group of Sri Lankan students, aged between 6 and 12, are learning how to make robots, a highly advanced technology that is sweeping throughout the world – thanks to Orange Electric Co.
“We at Orange Electric, saw a need to teach Robotics to our children as most curriculums are seeping in theory and leaves no room for understanding science from a practical point of view. What is Robotics? It is targeted mainly at the student who would ultimately become an engineer of sorts, and is basically stemming from the idea of teaching concepts and logic away from the textbook,” noted Kushan Kodituwakku, Managing Director of Orange Electric in a media statement.
Teaching Robotics
He says “we need to teach children that the highest level of wisdom comes from one’s own experiences rather than reading or hearing about it.”
Orange Electric has a very robust Research & Development division, and has now taken up teaching Robotics to students of Northwood Global College, Sri Lanka’s first corporate sponsored school that began under the patronage of a group of old boys of D S Senanayake College, to inspire values to children.
Kumari Wickremasinghe, Principal of the Northwood Global College says the initiative to conduct lessons on Robotics comes in tandem with the objectives behind creating the school, “Our college is the first ‘corporate international school’ in Sri Lanka. It is administered by a board of directors most of whom were students of D.S. Senanayake College during the tenure of its former Principal R.I.T. Alles. We did not want to create just-another-international school. We wanted to give a value to the system and inculcate good qualities and good values among students. This is actually what our directors inherited from R.I.T. Alles. It is in this context that the school started conducting lessons of Robotics for young students.”
Manoj Illangasooriya, Head of Orange Electric’s innovation centre conducts Robotics lessons every Saturday. He says, “Robotics is not only about making robots it also offers children various opportunities for the future. When they study Robotics, they not only learn about all the aspects of electronics including the exposure to motors, wires, batteries, to magnets, power supplies, to transistors and resisters, but also get them to think out of the box allowing them to bring out their creative genius. This is the most important outcome of these lessons.”
In addition to Mr. Illangasooriya, Indika Kulathunga, an R & D Engineer and also an old boy of D.S Senanayake College, takes up the lesson alternatively.
As the course progresses, students will learn more in-depth matters from fundamentals of electronics, to programming of robots by writing codes.
“Apart from conducting lectures on Robotics for children, we are the hub for innovation at Orange Electric. It always gives us an edge over our competitors and we have so far designed more than 200 new products for brand Orange and no other competitor in Sri Lanka has a robust R & D mechanism of this nature,” Mr. Illangasooriya said.
The R & D division of Orange Electric has various sections internally to look into the needs of the market and its customers. “After identifying their needs, we explore the feasibility and embark on the designing process,” he adds.
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