Supporting the Development of Computational Thinking: A Robotic Platform Controlled by Smartphone

Abstract

The difficulty of students in learning logic and programming languages leads the research of technological solutions to assist in the teaching-learning process. Among these solutions, two common approaches are robotics and graphical-based programming languages. Researches indicate that these tools can aid learners to think systematically and develop computational thinking. Therefore, this work proposes the Coffee Platform, which is composed by a Web-based block programming environment and a smartphone as a robot controller unit. This platform can be expanded to work with various mobile devices and robotic kits. The Coffee Platform was applied in a classroom with the aim of assessing the tool and its effects over students' motivation. Results indicate that the proposed solution can serve as a stimulus for students and assist in understanding programming concepts.

Evaluation of Computational Thinking using four educational robots with primary school students in Peru

“…Many researchers have shown that students can process information faster when using ER; likewise, ER activities are usually well accepted by boys and girls. Furthermore, they feel interested and motivated to continue learning ER topics compared to other disciplines (Witherspoon et al, 2016); allowing to reach a broad audience since robots typically stimulate the interests of students (Catlin & Woollard, 2014), comprising the entire range of motivation components (attention, relevance, confidence, attitude, and satisfaction) (Sarmento et al, 2015). Also, to capture students' attention, ER integrates several areas, such as Programming, Mathematics, Mechanics, and Electronics, for instance.…”

DRAFT-What you always wanted to know but could not find about block-based environments

“…UNC++Duino [18] BlocklyDuino Program robots to teach CS concepts. The Coffee Platform [131] Blockly Support computational thinking skills through robotics. LearnBlock [12] -Robot-agnostic educational tool.…”

Escenarios de aprendizaje personalizados a partir de la evaluación del pensamiento computacional para el aprendizaje de competencias de programación mediante un entorno b-learning y gamificación

“…Sáez-López et al (2016), muestran los resultados favorables de enseñar conceptos de computación en los primeros años escolares debido a la motivación que causa el entorno Scratch, para muchos profesores es una herramienta nueva y representa un reto aprender a usarlo e integrarlo en el aula, pero altamente justificable el esfuerzo debido a la aceptación de los niños, considerando que para ellos también es reto a vencer (Sentance & Csizmadia, 2017;Wong, Cheung, Ching, & Huen, 2015;Saari, Blanchfield, & Hopkins, 2016;Byrne, Fisher, & Tangney, 2015;Zeng, 2015;Bustillo & Garaizar, 2015;Calao, Moreno-León, Correa, & Robles, 2015;Dorling & White, 2015). Otras Instituciones y profesores han usado entornos alternativos a Scratch porque coinciden en los beneficios que aportan en los estudiantes (Cheng, Fu, & Chen, 2016;Worrell, Brand, & Repenning, 2015;Jenkins, 2015;Berland & Wilensky, 2015;Han, Kim, & Wohn, 2015;Sarmento, Reis, Zaramella, Almeida, & Tacla, 2015) e inclusive han propuesto contenidos temáticos o cursos para niños de 11-12 años (Duncan & Bell, 2015;Hui-Chi, Chiu-Fan, Cheng-Chih, & Yu-Tzu, 2015;Yadav, Mayfield, Zhou, Hambrusch, & Korb, 2014) y la organización de torneos abiertos para niños de hasta 14 años indica una confianza global por parte de las Instituciones educativas (UK Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge, 2015;Talent Search, 2015). El pensamiento computacional en estudios preuniversitarios es una herramienta que, en combinación con otras metodologías, los maestros tienen para crear escenarios y actividades de aprendizaje que son efectivas para ayudar a los jóvenes a resolver problemas mediante el uso de la tecnología con que viven a diario (García-Peñalvo F. J., 2018; Llorens-Largo, García-Peñalvo, Molero-Prieto, & Vendrell-Vidal, 2017).…”