Fernand “Nand” Bernardez is your timid always-smiling-guy who happens to teach at the High School Program right across the main building. He is the head of the HS Robotics Program and he is a well-praised national trainer. Nand started this year with something great, to train adult learners robotics. Why is it great? Because these learners are the students from the UP Cebu Master of Education Program who wish to teach new generation of students who happens to be more technology adept than they do.
Is it okay to learn robotics now? The answer is yes. If you are a teacher wanting to teach something new and different to your students, then you might find robotics a great tool. Robotics is known to enhance the integration of logic, critical thinking, and creative thinking among young learners. Aside from that, robotics is the way to go in the years to come. With technology, a lot of once manual processes can now be automated. As teachers, we don’t want to produce students who will be easily replaced by machines, we want students who will create and program machines.
What Nand is doing is to create an avenue not only for STEM aligned students to practice robotics, but also for non-STEM students to discover robotics.
