In 1998, LEGO Education launched the world-famous Mindstorm robots for education, enabling children to build fantastic LEGO robots using their imagination, and make them come to life with robot controllers, electronic sensors, and motors.<\/span><\/p>\n Founder of Semia, Eugene Zhang was the branch manager at National Instruments(NI) Hong Kong, and LEGO Education approached NI since NI provided the graphical software environment that allowed children to easily program the robot. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSo, thrilled with the vast potential of robotics education, Zhang founded Semia in 2000 to work with LEGO Education in Hong Kong and China. We took the word Semilla from Spanish meaning seed, and turned in into Semia and adopted the Chinese word \u897f\u89c5\u4e9a. The company name reflects our mission, which is to devote ourselves to education, in particular, to bring the best education practices from the West and Asia together, and nurture the creativity and innovative capabilities of our children,\u201d says Zhang.<\/span><\/p>\n In early 2000, the Chinese government already coined the phrase \u201cquality education\u201d, \u7d20\u8d28\u6559\u80b2, but speaking to teachers and educators, no one really knew how to incorporate \u201cquality education\u201d — the education that builds communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem solving skills and creative thinking skills into the textbook-based, exam-oriented Instruction-Based education system.<\/span><\/p>\n When Semia introduced LEGO robotics to the Chinese government officials and teachers, they were very excited, they can see students engaged in building their own robotics, solving problems together, learning with their hands and minds together, it was exactly the exciting learning environment they wanted to nurture, — \u201cConstructive Learning\u201d advocated by famous scientist Piaget. Thus, with the support of Henry Ying Tung Fok Foundation (\u970d\u82f1\u4e1c\u57fa \u91d1\u4f1a) Chinese government organized its first China Youth Robotics Competition in Nansha, Guangdong China in 2000. The first year 12 provinces in China participated in the competition of 2001, 25 provinces participated, and in 2002, all of Chinese provinces sent representative teams to Robotics Competition. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSemia continues to play an important role in robotics education over the last 15 years, we continue to provide students in China and Hong Kong with more opportunities to participate in robotics competitions. We are the FIRST and World Robot Olympiad organizer for China and Hong Kong, we continue to develop robotics curriculums in China, and now in Boston USA to help teachers and students, and we continue to partner with LEGO Education to promote LEGO Mindstorms and other LEGO Education materials. We also help design and manufacture a metal robotics system called Matrix, and are now looking to cooperate with Kinderlabs in America to bring robotics to kindergarten children in the form of a new product called KIBO.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nInspiring China <\/span><\/h3>\n
Quality First <\/span><\/h3>\n