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Teaching Robotics Concepts to Elementary School Children

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Robotics in Education (RiE 2017)

Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 630))

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Abstract

We taught computer science (cs) with robotics to four second-grade classes of 30 students each (ages 7–8). The lessons were taught using the Thymio robot and the vpl environment. Our goal was to investigate the extent to which students actually learn cs concepts. A taxonomy was developed to characterize the learning levels. The students answered two questionnaires based on the taxonomy and field observations were recorded. We found that students at such an early age were very engaged during the robotics activities and were highly motivated to succeed. Furthermore, these young students do learn cs concepts but find it difficult to create and run their own programs.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The hardware and the software are open souce under the CC-BY-SA license. Software, documentation and tutorials can be found at https://www.thymio.org/.

  2. 2.

    The first questionnaire was not administered to class 2 because of logistic difficulties.

  3. 3.

    Note the potential confusion between the button direction and the sensor position.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Stella Khazina for assisting in the classroom. We are grateful to the principal and teachers of the school for their willingness to participate in this research and for their cooperation and support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Science Teaching, Weizmann Insitute of Science, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    Mor Friebroon Yesharim & Mordechai Ben-Ari

Authors
  1. Mor Friebroon Yesharim
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  2. Mordechai Ben-Ari
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mor Friebroon Yesharim .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Practical Robotics Institute Austria (PRIA), Vienna, Austria

    Wilfried Lepuschitz

  2. Practical Robotics Institute Austria (PRIA), Vienna, Austria

    Munir Merdan

  3. Practical Robotics Institute Austria (PRIA), Vienna, Austria

    Gottfried Koppensteiner

  4. Slovak University of Technology (STU), Bratislava, Slovakia

    Richard Balogh

  5. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic

    David Obdržálek

A     Questions from the Questionnaires

A     Questions from the Questionnaires

1.1 Question 4 from the Second Questionnaire

Circle the event or action that will cause the program to implement this behavior:

  • When the front right sensor detects an object, the robot turns right.Footnote 3

  • When the front left sensor detects an object, the robot moves forwards.

figure a

1.2 Question 5 from the First Questionnaire

We invented a new event: The event occurs when the middle button is touched at the same time that the middle front sensor detects an object.

figure b

Required behavior:

  • If an object is detected by the front sensor the top leds will display blue.

  • Touching the middle button will display yellow in the top leds.

  • Touching the middle button at the same time that an object is detected by the middle front sensor will display green in the top leds.

Circle the program that implements this behavior:

figure c

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Friebroon Yesharim, M., Ben-Ari, M. (2018). Teaching Robotics Concepts to Elementary School Children. In: Lepuschitz, W., Merdan, M., Koppensteiner, G., Balogh, R., Obdržálek, D. (eds) Robotics in Education. RiE 2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 630. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62875-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62875-2_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62874-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62875-2

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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