An Early Start in Robotics – K-12 Case-Study

EDULEARN proceedings, 2017

With the objective of describing an investigation involving basic education and activities with Educational Robotics with Tools (Free Pedagogical Robotics) in public schools of Recife, this article focuses on the construction of robotic artifacts, their integration and contextualization with knowledge and school knowledge at the level of initial years of Basic Education. In this experiment, we involved fifty 4th and 5th graders students, aged between 9 and 10 years, trying to identify the level of transposition of the knowledge developed in the curricular subjects to solve the challenges proposed in the educational robotics workshops during the process of context, idealization, design, construction, programming and socialization of robotic artifacts relevant to children's imagination and integrated into the educational Brazilian curriculum.

Human, Technologies and Quality of Education, 2021, 2021

Educational robotics has been used for a relatively long time to promote the development of students’ computational thinking, but in most cases, such activities are offered as extracurricular activities to students who are interested in robotics and programming or in specific study programmes in higher education. Despite the fact that Seymour Papert developed the programming language LOGO to change the way children learn to use technology as early as 1980, this concept is still not widely used in compulsory education. It should be kept in mind that the inclusion of robotics in the learning process can not only contribute to the development of competencies such as programming and the integration of different components, sensors and actuators but also support the learning of mathematics, physics and chemistry in an innovative way. To support the development of innovative solutions for teaching educational robotics to primary school students, the ERASMUS+ project “Innovative Educationa...

International Journal of Research in E-learning, 2020

This article analyses various aspects of using robotics in education and examines the level of preparation and motivation of children and pupils. The authors carry out a comprehensive review of research and scientific publications regarding technological, didactical, methodological, and human aspects of using robotics in education. The article presents a report on a survey on pupils’ opinion on robotics in education, which was conducted during the third Silesian Science Festival, and discusses the exhibition stand presenting innovative digital technologies and methods in education and business as well as Photon robots.

Robotics is becoming extremely popular amongst the youngsters, because it is fun, you can practice with hands-on and above all you get real results. Since most students have to develop practical works in their schools, robotics works are becoming very popular. But robotic is a multidisciplinary area of knowledge and therefore the school teachers might not have the know-how in all required fields. The Robotics Group at University of Minho (Guimarães, Portugal), created a new robotics event called RoboParty© where they actually build robots from scratch (mechanics, electronics, programming, etc.) in 3 days (24 hours a day) supervised continuously by experts on the various fields. At the end, they take the robot home with them and they can continue using and improving it later on.

2018

Since the acronym STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) was firstly introduced by the US National Science Foundation to bring technology and engineering into regular K-12 curriculum, Robotics has proven itself to be the sum of STEM disciplines. This paper presents an extra-curricular experience held in a formal environment with the aim to foster culture on technology and, in particular, on smart cities. Final assessment strategies included questionnaires and crossword puzzles to evaluate students’ perception of activities and the knowledge they acquired. Data were processed and compared with the objectives of the project: increasing interest in learning school’s subjects, stimulating students to work in team and transforming students’ attitude towards ICT. Results showed that robotics engagingly teach traditional concepts while applying them to compelling real-world problems. Authors hope that this reported experience may give a useful contribution in favor of the int...

SSRN Electronic Journal

This article will discuss the delivery of STEM education to students through robotics and its training programs and projects. The use of technology in teaching can be effective in teaching of hardware and software courses at higher education institutions as well as mathematics, physics and biology classes at secondary school. The National University of Mongolia offered students who study engineering and computing extracurricular program. The students of software and information technology majors learned robotics, computer programming and the program developed students logical thinking, problem solving and critical thinking skills as well in project-based learning environment. Students accomplished several tasks and missions while developing logical and creative solutions to problems using LEGO Mindstorms NXT. Mindstorms NXT set includes programmable brick, sensors, and motor with visual programming environment. It enables new programmers; learners make a program for robot using this visual programming environment easily. This paper describes how to use ROBOTC in delivery of robotics learning and discusses the effects of robotics learning and teaching in STEM education.

Nowadays is well known that the learning of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) can benefit from using Robotics technologies. Furthermore, robot-based educational activities can enhance not only the acquirement of concepts in other fields (e.g. literature, history) but even improve children emotional and social development. This paper describes how robotics has been introduced transversally at all k12 level in the school Montserrat in Barcelona, Spain. The infrastructure to support the program, the planning of the activities and research studies, a classification of these activities based on the children-robot interaction modality, and the details of some examples are described and discussed.

IEEE Transactions on Education, 2004

Encouraging children's interest in science and technology, as well as increasing their technological literacy, may be regarded as one of the educational paradigms of this century. The authors of this paper, affiliated with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Chile, Santiago, have designed schemes to contribute to both goals and set guidelines for curricular and extracurricular school activities related to technology. In this context, this paper reviews their experience concerning practical robotics courses for children developed since 2000. More than 700 children and 90 school teachers have already attended these robotics courses, and the model is now being implemented in several schools and institutions in Chile. The robotics courses evolved to their present form from ideas developed during the late 1990s, mostly in the United States. Some preliminary assessment data is presented to support this approach. Current projects are also outlined. It is believed that the authors' experience might be of interest to engineering schools elsewhere.

Education Sciences , 2019

Educational robotics (ER) is increasingly present in secondary education classrooms and has acquired greater projection, especially with the appearance of championships, such as FIRST ® LEGO ® League. These competitions are based on a globalizing focus of the different areas of the curriculum, therefore, we consider that it directly links with the achievement of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) skills. We present a research study that provides objective data based on the opinions of teachers and students that participated in this championship during the course 2017/2018 about its impact in the learning process. To this end, Spanish students and teachers answered questionnaires to collect their perceptions and assessments just after their participation. The results obtained allow us to conclude that both teachers and students believe this project promotes interest and scientific curiosity, as well as social skills through teamwork.

2019

This research explores the impact of educational robotics on children aged 9-15. The research was conducted after a training robotics seminar and, as evidenced by its results, the learners were thrilled by the content of the program, although they initially mistrust the program because of relative ignorance. However, they seemed happy that they met new friends and worked with them without any particular difficulty. The use of computer as well as the programming did not present any difficulty. The research concluded that older children were more familiar with concepts that are directly related to programming, obviously because they are every day involved with technology and less with robotics. Of course, with regard to the construction of various vehicles, the trainees showed their impatience and inventiveness for this and were extremely effective. It is therefore obvious that through educational robotics, children can learn to cooperate more effectively with each other and that the teaching of basic principles of computer science, mathematics, geometry, physics, mechanics, and in general mechatronics, can escape the narrow limits of conventional teaching and to take the form of a game.