Design, story-telling, and robots in Irish primary education

Springer Proceedings in Advanced Robotics, 2020

In early childhood and elementary educational contexts, there is an increasing need to support the development of interdisciplinary skills such as creativity, digital literacy and critical thinking. Educational robotics can play a relevant role in this process, by providing contexts that involve design, construction and imagination. The STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) approach offers a paradigm, which, by integrating educational robotics with scientific, digital and artistic perspectives, helps to undermine existing racial and gender inequality in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and STEAM-related contexts. Some relevant experiences regarding the possibility to combine these fields in educational contexts show promising results. By discussing the most relevant difficulties related to the development of curricula where educational robotics finds a relevant place, this paper argues that the use of robotics as experimented with in the Reggio Emilia Approach allows to overstep most of the difficulties reported. Furthermore, it is argued that in order to be more effective, educational robotics might be considered by teachers not as a subject to teach by providing instructions but, instead, as a medium to allow children to explore the affordances of digital technologies in playful learning environments. Some practical examples of this perspective are reported and discussed in the final part of the paper.

Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, 2021

Robotics in Education (RiE) is a broad term that refers to a variety of applications. Robots can enhance learning and teaching, but they can also help overcome impairments, whether physical or social. Even though the advantages of bringing new technologies into schools are clear, the lack of a well-established set of good practices, assessment of experiences, and tools slows down their adoption. This chapter aims to highlight the key points that emerge from the recent enhancements in RiE. First, the market and research are continuously developing new tools for school to try to meet needs and tailor products. Second, there is a wealth of formal and non-formal experiences, both in the literature and in school activities. Third, research is still validating tools and methodologies that will assess the impact of introducing robotics into education. Despite the wide availability of tools and experiences, there is still a certain degree of uncertainty about how to cope with technology in ...

Dialogic Pedagogy, 2022

This article explores how the adoption of educational robotics, cloud-based animation software, and simplified visual programming software can provide valuable opportunities for dialogic interaction and learning. The potentialities of this type of activity are often overlooked in dialogic investigations. Based on empirical illustration, we discuss how openended educational tasks involving the creation of material-digital artifacts can promote the expression of the students' voices and the emergence of a dialogic space in which both human and non-human Others, as well as chronotropic dynamics and materiality, play a crucial role. To provide a polyphonic account of the dialogical processes detected, we analyzed excerpts from two group interviews with seven lower secondary school students (aged 11-12) and excerpts taken from meetings with their teacher. Our qualitative analysis shows that the technology-mediated activity provided valuable opportunities for opening a dialogic space in which the students could express their own voice in interaction with both human and non-human Others. The material world (including the virtual materiality of computer-generated objects) seems to play a twofold role. First, the resistance of the virtual and material objects can contribute to the opening of a dialogical space between the child and the world; second, the chronotopic relations seem to have an impact on the dialogic learning process. These are valid opportunities for educationally relevant dialogic interaction. They should be cultivated and supported to further advance the pedagogical value of educational robotics and coding.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2006

Abstract. Empowering Minds (EM) is a project that has deeply integrated technologically expressive materials, including robotics and presentation and programming software, into the educational practices of teachers at more than a dozen primary schools across Ireland. Here, we ...

Education Sciences, 2021

Robotics is needed as education keeps up with challenges students are facing in a technological environment. A long-term research project focuses on developing a feasible robotics-based learning environment that enables primary school teachers to introduce computer science education. This paper shows educational robotics combining storytelling to promote computational thinking through the method of Tell, Draw, and Code. The study was conducted via pre–post test, using the Beginners Computational Thinking test (BCTt), with third and fourth graders (N = 40) to determine if the integration of robotics-based storytelling activities enhances computational thinking skills. Results show that an increase in computational thinking is evident after the intervention is implemented. The approach of combining stories, texts, and literature with educational robotics seems to be a promising concept to equip students with the required skills.

2005

Research on the teaching of programming has shown that novice programmers often come up against significant difficulties in understanding programming concepts as well as in finding solutions to even elementary programming problems. One of the basic strategies which has been adopted in order to confront this problem, were programming languages and environments created with the specific aim to make both the teaching and learning processes of programming easier. A typical category of these types of environments consists of systems where the novice programmer manipulates real entities such as robots and automatic mechanisms. In this research we present a series of pilot lessons for an introduction to programming with the help of Lego Mindstorms and the visual programming environment ROBOLAB. The research was carried out on Greek secondary school students in the 9th and 10th grades. We present the initial results, which clearly show the advantages of this environment over the standard ones conventionally used, as well as some problems.

Early Mathematics Learning and Development, 2018

Although we are surrounded by technology on a daily basis, the inner working of devices like phones and computers is often a mystery to children and adults alike. Robotics offers a unique way for children (and grown-ups!) to explore sensors, motors, circuit boards, and other electronic components together from the inside out. This chapter describes how robotics can be used as a playful medium in early childhood classrooms to learn foundational engineering and computer science concepts. By presenting vignettes from three early childhood classrooms that embarked on an eight-week KIBO robotics curriculum, this chapter highlights how educators with little to no prior engineering experience were able to successfully integrate robotics with traditional early childhood content such as literacy and science. KIBO is a developmentally appropriate robotics kit specifically designed for children ages 4-7 that is controlled with tangible programming blocks-no screen time required. The three classroom teachers worked with researchers from Tufts University and Lesley University to integrate KIBO robotics with the teachers' traditional learning units. The three vignettes will describe the following classroom experiences: using robotics to bring to life the book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do you See? in the context of literacy explorations; and in science, programming the life cycles of the frog and the butterfly, and using robots to model the movement of worms through different environments. These vignettes will highlight the very different approaches teachers took to introducing robotics to their students and how they utilized the engineering design process as a teaching tool that can be applied to most subject areas.

Makers at School, Educational Robotics and Innovative Learning Environments, 2021

Many researchers and teachers agree that the inclusion of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in early education provides strong motivation and greatly improves the speed of learning. Most primary school curricula include a number of concepts that cover science and mathematics, but less effort is placed in teaching problem-solving, computer science, technology and robotics. The use of robotic systems and the introduction of robotics as a curriculum subject educates children in the basics of technology, and gives them additional human and organizational values. This paper presents a new program introduced in an Italian primary school, thanks to a collaboration with National Instruments and Università Politecnica delle Marche. Specifically, the project’s curricular aim was to improve logic, creativity, and the ability to focus, all of which are lacking in today’s generation of students. The subject of robotics will be part of the primary school’s curriculum for all five ...

2019

This paper focuses on the small-scale pilots with learners that were carried out in Greece in the frame of the eCraft2Learn project including activities that aim at reinforcing learning by making in STEAM education. In the context of the pilots, 13-17 years-old students worked with digital fabrication and making technologies for creating robotic artefacts. In the framework of an appropriate pedagogical model that supports different steps highly interlinked, the teachers and students were invited to work together and explore the fun and the challenges of the making process using the eCraft2Learn learning ecosystem. In this line, a number of good practices were identified related to the facilitation of the learning process, the support of the ideation, the boosting of the can-do attitude, the embracement of failure and the encouragement towards sharing projects, experiences and ideas. Most of these practices are reflected in video-recorded episodes accessible through this paper. I bam...

Frontiers in Education

Schools are searching for strategies to foster 4C competencies (Creativity, Cooperation, Communication and Critical Thinking) in children. Scientific Reasoning, Critical Thinking, and the ability to debunk myths are already important competencies that can be fostered with science education. How can we approach the majority of seventh grade students in a given school to create innovative approaches for the future, and leverage their skills in science, art and (digital) technology along the path? And are the teachers ready to guide them on this path? This article focuses on the questions: how did the teachers adopt both the STEAM approach, and the use of digital tools while being supervised by researchers and student teachers and how did this change their beliefs about technology in education. As a pathway, we aimed to connect Robotics, Coding, Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. To end poverty, protect the environment, and...