In March, an award ceremony was held at the Kisarazu First Elementary School. The principal, Mori Kono, presented awards to the contestants who participated in the MWRC 2020 Global Finals. Under the leadership of the coach and teacher for MWRC participators, Moto Hamada, the young players received not only the certificate of the MWRC 2020 Finals, but also a Matatalab Lite as a prize. Everyone was happy.

It was not unreasonable for the young players to be so happy, as the whole school witnessed their glorious moments, which is a huge encouragement for them. Due to the pandemic, the commendation ceremony was held remotely. Mr. Naoto Shimura, CEO of Kumon publishing, and Dr. Tamotsu Okamoto, Prof. and vice president of National Institute of Technology, Kisarazu, recorded a video to congratulate the children and highly praised their performance in the Finals.

They said that, “in Mars Exploration task, the young players not only needed to imagine what they thought Mars would be like (Mars may have hills, volcanoes, valleys, underground lakes…), but also had to think about how to make their MatataBots run. All this was very surprising. Hope that the children will continue to learn coding and make continuous progress in the future.”

The commendation meeting also attracted the attention of local media. The New Chiba News reported the meeting with a special news page. The news mentioned that as the only model school in Japan that used Matatalab aids and courses in coding teaching, Kisarazu First Elementary School achieved fruitful educational practices. In the fall of last year, a total of seven teams from the school participated in the Finals of MWRC Online Robotics Competition. After the final selection on December 18, four teams finally won awards.

After introducing Matatalab, the media also interviewed the award winners Nanoha IWAI and Honoka MOKI. They told the media that, “The universe was the theme of the coding task in the Finals. We can not only imagine what the universe is like, but also build a space station. The process was very funny. We will continue to play with MatataBots in the future.”

So much attention obtained was, of course, inseparable from the players’ excellent performance in the Finals.

The theme of the 2020 MWRC Online Finals was “Space Exploration”. The competition aimed to encourage children to not only consider the realization of functions, but also integrate design and creativity in the process of solving problems.

Compared with the performance of children from other countries, the team spirit of Japanese children during the competition was very outstanding. From map drawing, props production to scenario construction, every player worked together, and the division of work was very clever. Although the materials used were not complicated, creativity and intention were everywhere in the works.

The Japanese young players’ execution was also very fluent in the coding process. Each player was able to clearly describe the MatataBot’s path. It was obvious that everyone was very proficient in Matatalab tangible coding. So the four teams from Kisarazu First Elementary School deserved the final awards.

The successful holding of the 2020 MWRC Online Finals undoubtedly created a good model for the development of MWRC competition in Japan. It was believed that with the commendation meeting held by Kisarazu First Elementary School, the MWRC brand will be promoted to other schools, which will lay the foundation for the holding of MWRC regional competitions in Japan.

Matatalab has always been committed to perfectly integrating technology in education, and providing professional STEAM solutions for kindergartens, elementary schools and educational institutions. This year, Matatalab will also host a series of more exciting coding competitions to provide a platform for children from more countries and regions to fully communicate and share, so that everyone can create more futuristic coding works and experience the joy of growth and learning.