STARTUP
Robo Wunderkind
Robo Wunderkind builds tools that change the way kids play, learn, and create with tech in school and at home. Our award-winning robotics kits empower kids aged 5 and up to learn to code through the joy of play.
What we believe in:
Technology is exciting
We believe technology should play a crucial role in education. Our products inspire kids to engage with technology in a creative way. For us tech is exciting, it’s about empowerment, learning, and the joy of creation.
Coding unlocks creativity
Coding teaches kids to break down complex problems into a sequence of smaller, more manageable tasks. It nurtures their creativity and provides the skills to create a world of limitless possibilities. The skills they learn will help them thrive in a complex and challenging world.
Play-based learning creates meaningful experiences
Play-based learning builds confidence and inspires creativity by providing kids with open-ended materials and loose parts that can be arranged and experimented with in a variety of different ways.
Robo Wunderkind's Story
Shortly before Anna Iarostka, CEO & Co-founder, started “Robo Wunderkind”, she was on the organizational team of the “Pioneers Festival”, a large start-up conference in Austria. She came into contact with very exciting, future-oriented challenges and companies. She realized how quickly everything changes, how quickly technology can be developed. I’ve seen how we can make our children feel about the increasingly faster work environment.
It’s not about all children becoming programmers, but about imparting an understanding of the basics of programming. So how do automated systems work. This, in turn, is an advantage for many professions. From our point of view, programming is an expansion of skills and we want to give children the opportunity to implement their own ideas creatively and digitally.
Another topic that moves us a lot is to promote STEAM skills in girls. Basically, research says there are no differences in the brains of preschool boys and girls. In elementary school, differences begin to develop, but that is just a response to the environment. It’s not innate. Society continues to project certain roles onto girls. So there are differences in abilities, but above all in belief in one’s own abilities. The reason that girls are less enthusiastic or less enthusiastic about STEM subjects is a combination of the curriculum, the way in which the teaching is done – i.e. the attitude of the teachers – and the social attitude.
In addition, subjects like math are not popular in German-speaking countries. Math is considered complicated and boring. I come from the Ukraine and math is the queen of science there, we have a completely different attitude and teaching is different. Math has a different status.
It is very important to us that the product appeals to girls and boys alike. It should be cool and not look too technical. We show girls how to program their own robots so that they can develop the belief that this topic is also something for them – and not just for boys. Then of course there are parents who would like to consciously encourage this in their daughters; there are also parents who are firmly convinced that “Robo Wunderkind” is not for their daughter. We always try to convince people here.