L Zecca

The Game of Science: An Experiment in Synthetic Roboethology with Primary School Children

Educational robots may be used for purposes other than teaching computer science and robotics. In this article, we describe an educational robotics activity designed to enhance primary school childrens ability to conduct cross-disciplinary scientific inquiry, not by requiring them to build and program robots but by inviting them to work out the mechanism(s) governing preprogrammed robots.

A multimodal LEGO®-based learning activity mixing musical notation and computer programming

This paper discusses a multimodal learning activity based on LEGO® bricks where elements from the domains of music and informatics are mixed. Such an experience addresses children in preschool age and students of the primary schools in order to convey some basic aspects of computational thinking. The learning methodology is organized in two phases where construction blocks are employed as a physical tool and as a metaphor for music notation, respectively. The goal is to foster in young students abilities such as analysis and re-synthesis, problem solving, abstraction and adaptive reasoning. A web application to support this approach and to provide a prompt feedback to user action is under development, and its design principles and key characteristics will be presented.

Theoretical vocabularies and styles of explanation of robot behaviours in children

Abstract How do children describe and explain the behaviour of robotic systems? In this paper, some distinctions between different types of explanations, drawing from the philosophy of science literature, are proposed and exemplified by reference to an activity in which primary school children are asked to describe and explain the behaviour of a pre-programmed Braitenberg-like vehicle. The proposed distinctions are also discussed against other studies drawn from the related scientific literature. A qualitative study has provided insights to further refine the analysis described here, through the introduction of other sub-categories of explanation of robotic behaviours.