Creolabs, a start-up company operating at the Microsoft Innovation Centre, will this month kick off a course on Internet of Things (IoT) with Form 2 students at Mater Boni Consilii St Joseph’s School in Paola. This course is being supported by Microsoft, which is supplying all the technical equipment and support for this course.
Creolabs co-founder Joseph Woods explained how the Internet of Things was an emerging paradigm in ICT.
“At Creolabs, our mission is to inspire children and youth to generate a passion for creative thinking, invention and innovation. We are slowly bringing a silent revolution in the way children ought to be educated. Through Creolabs’ taster programme, we have exposed around 350 schoolchildren to the skills of the 21st century and more than 80 children have already attended courses at the School of Invention,” he said.
This course is Creolabs’ second collaboration with Mater Boni Consilii St Joseph School. In October of last year, the same school had attended a Creolabs class every Friday, during which 32 students in grades 3 and 4 got two sessions of 1.5 hours each. During these sessions students were taught creative thinking, personal development and communication. Creolabs plans to continue this programme during 2017.
The school’s head Kenneth Vella said how being receptive to such initiatives added value to the students’ education experience.
“We have already had the privilege of working and collaborating with Microsoft during the pilot project on the use of tablets project and now we were delighted to host Creolabs, a Microsoft Innovation Centre start-up in its delivery of these new education courses to our students. We are also offering our students and members of staff the opportunity to do a number of lessons interactively through these educational tablets provided to us by Microsoft,” Dr Vella said.
“We believe in alternative education that opens our students to today’s technology and tomorrow’s opportunities. In fact, although these courses are not free, we managed to subsidise and finance them through the support of parents and the Sisters’ community. As education leaders, we believe that it is our duty to offer such opportunities to our students and as a country we should do our utmost to help our students to develop their potential in creative thinking,” he added.
Edward Portelli from Microsoft’s Innovation Centre said one of the MIC’s start-ups was now in a position to assist and help local students enjoy a significant and innovative educational experience.
“The Microsoft Innovation Centre is another important investment by Microsoft in Malta and its important and crucial IT eco-system. We look at Creolabs and its important work with pride and as Microsoft, we commit to keep supporting Maltese entrepreneurs achieve their full potential,” he said.
The Internet of Things refers to the concept that the internet will no longer be just a global network of people who communicate with one another using computers but will also be a platform for devices to communicate electronically with the world around us. By 2020 the internet is projected to have 50 billion connections. The IoT is being called the fourth industrial revolution.