Robots, Coding, and Creativity: Girls in STEM Take on Bee-Bots

Another exciting week at the Discovery Science and Technology Centre saw the Girls in STEM Club dive into the marvelous world of programming, this time, by coding robots.

Their challenge?  Make robots move without touch or vision, using only carefully planned instructions.  The session began with Bee-Bots, simple yet powerful little robots equipped with forward, backward, left, right, pause, and delete buttons.  Working in pairs, the girls first designed their own tracks, making them as creative and challenging as possible.

Next came the real test: programming the Bee-Bot to navigate someone else’s track.  Suddenly, coding became more than just pressing buttons.  It required understanding starting points, end goals, direction, and logic.  The girls quickly discovered that interpreting someone else’s code is not always straightforward.  Different teams used different styles such as arrows, maps, symbols, highlighting the importance of clear communication.  Agreeing on a shared coding “language,” or at least providing a legend, became essential.

The final challenge encouraged reflection and improvement.  Teams returned to their original tracks and redesigned them to be easier to code, clearly marking starting points and adding helpful reference markers.

By the end, the girls had felt the thrill of watching their robots follow precise instructions, experienced the power of computational thinking, and discovered that coding is not just about pressing buttons, it is about creativity, collaboration, and thinking several steps ahead.  Beyond programming, the session strengthened their problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills, showing that coding is as much about clarity and strategy as it is about commands.