Robotics and computational thinking in primary school

Chalmers, Christina

doi:10.1016/j.ijcci.2018.06.005

Cited by 181 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…At the primary school level, a similar approach was experimented [3]. The focus was on the teacher's side providing them with a robotic kit to promote problem-solving and group work with their pupils.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Robotics: a Review

Ribeiro

Lopes

2020

Curr Robot Rep

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Purpose of Review With the growing interest for STEM/STEAM, new robotic platforms are being created with different characteristics, extras, and options. There are so many diverse solutions that it is difficult for a teacher/student to choose the ideal one. This paper intends to provide an analysis of the most common robotic platforms existent on the market. The same is happening regarding robotic events all around the world, with objectives so distinctive, and with complexity from easy to very difficult. This paper also describes some of those events which occur in many countries. Recent Findings As the literature is showing, there has been a visible effort from schools and educators to teach robotics from very young ages, not only because robotics is the future, but also as a tool to teach STEM/STEAM areas. But as time progresses, the options for the right platforms also evolve making difficult to choose amongst them. Some authors opt to first choose a robotic platform and carry on from there. Others choose first a development environment and then look for which robots can be programmed from it. Summary An actual review on learning robotics is here presented, firstly showing some literature background on history and trends of robotic platforms used in education in general, the different development environments for robotics, and finishing on competitions and events. A comprehensive characterization list of robotic platforms along with robotic competitions and events is also shown.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Robotics: a Review

Ribeiro

Lopes

2020

Curr Robot Rep

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“…Learning to code and CT development is a growing trend internationally (Chalmers, 2018;Faber et al, 2017). While it was earlier regarded as a suitable skill for advanced learners aiming for an IT career, today it is seen as an essential 21st-century skill that can be taught even to elementary students (Grover & Pea, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Going beyond digital literacy to develop computational thinking in K-12 education

Menon¹,

Bp²,

Roméro³

et al. 2020

Epistemological Approaches to Digital Learning in Educational Contexts

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In the past decade, digital learning has contributed to the transformation of K-12 education by using a variety of technology-enhanced pedagogical approaches, and it helps understand the basics of computational thinking (CT). In the area of CT for young learners, educators are experimenting with digital or digital-inspired methods to go beyond digital literacy, towards also improving other skills, such as problem-solving, logical thinking and abstraction. By improving these skills, we aim to empower learners with the required knowledge as technology users and to aid in mastering the technology to develop their creative and citizenship potential through them. This chapter will provide a literature review on studies conducted to teach computer programming and computational concepts to K-12 students using visual programming tools, unplugged activities and educational robotics while evaluating how it can also help improve CT skills.

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“…Experts recommend that the computing curricula should provide clear examples [9], being this the main contribution of this paper. The current work stems from an extensive on-field experience of four years of computational activities with a huge variety of 30 schools and more than 1000 students, figures significantly larger than those in the state of the art [10].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Coding Curriculum for K-12 Education: The Evidence-Based Approach

Vico¹,

M²,

Orden³

et al. 2019

EDULEARN Proceedings

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In recent years, public and private educational systems are making efforts to update their programmes as to integrate computational thinking and computer programming in K-12 grades. Despite the expertise of the academic world in teaching CS, and the vast amount of knowledge and tools available to evaluate programming skills in industry, there are no clear clues on how children do learn CS concepts, or what is the best strategy to develop coding skills in the school, and how to implement it with limited resources (hardware and trained personnel). The reason for these difficulties has to do with the variety of environments in the market, as well as the complexity to perform controlled multicenter experimentation with children that are exposed differently to computer programming (from no contact at all, to gaining skills at home, or in academies). We propose a curriculum to teach the most relevant concepts of CS, ranging from the very basic command execution, to problem-solving with Artificial Intelligence heuristics, covering the whole K-12 school grades. Instead of being based on computational thinking studies, this curriculum is the result of four years of field work, testing the ToolboX Academy programming environment on site, from a direct scrutiny of children interaction with the interface and tasks definition, to a controlled experiment where more than a thousand students became involved, from 30 different centers. The result is a detailed description of how the fundamental concepts of computer programming can be presented to primary-school students in order to reach a high level of coding proficiency, as well as acquiring the AI bases.

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Robotics and computational thinking in primary school

Cited by 181 publications

References 27 publications

Learning Robotics: a Review

Learning Robotics: a Review

Going beyond digital literacy to develop computational thinking in K-12 education

A Coding Curriculum for K-12 Education: The Evidence-Based Approach

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