research-article

A robotics-based approach to foster programming skills and computational thinking: Pilot experience in the classroom of early childhood education

Authors:

Yen Air Caballero González,

Ana García-Valcárcel Muñoz-RepisoAuthors Info & Claims

TEEM'18: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality

Pages 41 - 45

https://doi.org/10.1145/3284179.3284188

Published: 24 October 2018 Publication History

Abstract

This document has the purpose to present some results obtained in the pilot experience, play and program with Bee-Bot. The activities were developed in the framework of the doctoral research project whose purpose is the design and integration of learning activities with robotics to foster programming skills and computational thinking in the classroom of early childhood. Teachers and students of the second cycle of early childhood education of a concerted school participated in the experience during 2016-2017 academic period. School is in Salamanca, Spain. The activity allowed students to solve programming challenges using the Bee-Bot floor robot. Instruments were used to collect data, such as: questionnaires, interviews, rubrics and field diary. In general terms, the results obtained were positive. The technical, pedagogical and social aspects proposed in this research have received the favorable acceptance of teachers and students. Therefore, the information generated allowed to strengthen the design, structure and evaluation of the robotics program would be used in later stages of the investigation.

References

[1]

Acuña Zúñiga, A. L. (2012). Diseño y administración de proyectos de robótica educativa: lecciones aprendidas. Teoría de la Educación. Educación y Cultura en la Sociedad de la Información, 13(3).

[2]

Barr, D., Harrison, J., & Conery, L. (2011). Computational Thinking: A Digital Age Skill for Everyone. Learning and Leading with Technology, 38(6), 20--23.

[3]

Bers, M. U. (2008). Using robotic manipulatives to develop technological fluency in early childhood. Cont P on Sci Technol Early Child Educ, 105--225.

[4]

Bers, M. U. (2018, April). Coding, playgrounds and literacy in early childhood education: The development of KIBO robotics and ScratchJr. In Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 2018 IEEE (pp. 2094-2102). IEEE.

[5]

Bers, M. U., & Horn, M. S. (2010). Tangible programming in early childhood. High-tech tots: Childhood in a digital world, 49, 49--70.

[6]

Bers, M. U., & Portsmore, M. (2005). Teaching partnerships: Early childhood and engineering students teaching math and science through robotics. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 14(1), 59--73.

[7]

Bers, M. U., Flannery, L., Kazakoff, E. R., & Sullivan, A. (2014). Computational thinking and tinkering: Exploration of an early childhood robotics curriculum. Computers & Education, 72, 145--157.

[8]

Bravo Sánchez, F. Á., & Guzmán, A. F. (2012). La Robótica Como Un Recurso Para Facilitar El Aprendizaje Y Desarrollo De Competencias Generales. Teoría de La Educación. Educación Y Cultura En La Sociedad de La Información, 13, NUM 2(1138--9737), 120--1362.

[9]

Bruni, F., & Nisdeo, M. (2017). Educational robots and children's imagery: a preliminary investigation in the first year of primary school. Research on Education and Media, 9(1), 37--44.

[10]

C. Fernández-Llamas, M. Á. Conde-González, F. J. Rodríguez-Lera, F. J. Rodríguez-Sedano, and F. J. García-Peñalvo. 2018. May I teach you? Students' behavior when lectured by robotic vs. human teachers. Computers in Human Behavior 80, 460--469.

Digital Library

[11]

F. J. García-Peñalvo and J. A. Mendes, "Exploring the computational thinking effects in pre-university education," Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 80, pp. 407-411, 2018.

[12]

F. J. García-Peñalvo, M. S. Ramírez-Montoya, and A. García-Holgado. 2017. TEEM 2017 Doctoral Consortium Track. In Fifth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM'17) (Cádiz, Spain, October 18-20, 2017) J.M. Dodero, M.S. Ibarra Sáiz and I. Ruiz Rube Eds. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 93.

Digital Library

[13]

F. J. García-Peñalvo. 2014. Formación en la sociedad del conocimiento, un programa de doctorado con una perspectiva interdisciplinar. Education in the Knowledge Society 15, 1, 4--9.

[14]

F. J. García-Peñalvo. 2016. A brief introduction to TACCLE 3 -- Coding European Project. In 2016 International Symposium on Computers in Education (SIIE 16), F.J. García-Peñalvo and J.A. Mendes Eds. IEEE, USA.

[15]

F. J. García-Peñalvo. 2017. Education in the Knowledge Society PhD Programme. 2017 Kick-off Meeting. In Proceedings of the Seminarios del Programa de Doctorado en Formación en la Sociedad del Conocimiento (16 de noviembre de 2017) (Salamanca, España2017). Instituto Universitario de Ciencias de la Educación.

[16]

G. Chiazzese, G. Fulantelli, V. Pipitone, and D. Taibi. 2017. Promoting computational thinking and creativeness in primary school children. In Fifth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM'17) (Cádiz, Spain, October 18-20, 2017) J.M. Dodero, M.S. Ibarra Sáiz and I. Ruiz Rube Eds. ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 6.

Digital Library

[17]

G. Chiazzese, G. Fulantelli, V. Pipitone, and D. Taibi. 2018. Engaging Primary School Children in Computational Thinking: Designing and Developing Videogames. Education in the Knowledge Society 19, 2, 63--81.

[18]

García-Peñalvo, F. J., Rees, A. M., Hughes, J., Jormanainen, I., Toivonen, T., y Vermeersch, J. (2016). A survey of resources for introducing coding into schools. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (TEEM'16) (Salamanca, Spain, November 2-4, 2016) New York, NY, USA: ACM., 19--26.

Digital Library

[19]

González, Y. A. C., & Muñoz-Repiso, A. G. V. (2017, October). Development of computational thinking skills and collaborative learning in initial education students through educational activities supported by ICT resources and programmable educational robots. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality (p. 103). ACM.

Digital Library

[20]

Hernández Sampieri, R., Fernández Collado, C. y Baptista Lucio, P. (2014). Metodología de la investigación. 6a ed. México, D.F.: McGraw-Hill Education.

[21]

J. González Martínez, M. Estebanell Minguell, and M. Peracaula Bosch. 2018. ¿Robots o programación? El concepto de Pensamiento Computacional y los futuros maestros. Education in the Knowledge Society 19, 2, 29--45.

[22]

K. P. Patiño, B. C. Diego, V. M. Rodilla, M. J. R. Conde, and J. F. Rodríguez-Aragón. 2014. Using Robotics as a Learning Tool in Latin America and Spain. IEEE Revista Iberoamericana de Tecnologias del Aprendizaje 9, 4, 144--150.

[23]

Kalelioğlu, F. (2015). A new way of teaching programming skills to K-12 students: Code. org. Computers in Human Behavior, 52, 200--210.

Digital Library

[24]

Kazakoff, E., & Bers, M. (2012). Programming in a robotics context in the kindergarten classroom: The impact on sequencing skills. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 21(4), 371--391.

[25]

Misirli, A., & Komis, V. (2014). Robotics and programming concepts in Early Childhood Education: a conceptual framework for designing educational scenarios. In Research on e-Learning and ICT in Education (pp. 99-118). Springer, New York, NY.

[26]

Moreno, I., Muñoz, L., Serracín, J. R., Quintero, J., Pittí Patiño, K., & Quiel, J. (2012). La robótica educativa, una herramienta para la ensenañza-aprendizaje de las ciencias y las tecnologías. Teoría de la Educación. Educación y Cultura en la Sociedad de la Información, 13(2).

[27]

Resnick, M., & Rosenbaum, E. (2013). Designing for tinkerability. Design, make, play: Growing the next generation of STEM innovators, 163--181.

[28]

Ruiz Calvo, J., & López Fernández, S. (2016). 5phero Kids. Una aplicación educativa para alumnos de Educación Infantil.

[29]

Strawhacker, A. L., & Bers, M. U. (2014, August). ScratchJr: Computer programming in early childhood education as a pathway to academic readiness and success. In Poster presented at DR K-12 PI Meeting (Vol. 5).

[30]

Strawhacker, A., Sullivan, A., & Bers, M. U. (2013, June). TUI, GUI, HUI: is a bimodal interface truly worth the sum of its parts?. In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 309-312). ACM.

Digital Library

[31]

Sullivan, A. A., Bers, M. U., & Mihm, C. (2017). Imagining, Playing, and Coding with KIBO: Using Robotics to Foster Computational Thinking in Young Children. Siu-cheung KONG The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 110.

[32]

Sullivan, A., Elkin, M., & Bers, M. U. (2015, June). KIBO robot demo: engaging young children in programming and engineering. In Proceedings of the 14th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 418-421). ACM.

Digital Library

[33]

Valverde, J., Fernández, M. R. y Garrido, M. C. (2015). Computational thinking and the new ecologies of learning. RED - Journal of Distance Education, 46(3), 1--18.

[34]

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33--35.

Digital Library

[35]

Wing, J. M. (2008). Computational thinking and thinking about computing. IPDPS Miami 2008 - Proceedings of the 22nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, Program and CD-ROM, (July), 3717--3725.

[36]

Zapata-Ros, M. (2015). Pensamiento computacional: Una nueva alfabetización digital. RED, Revista de Educación a distancia, 46.

Cited By

Underwood LBall THodges SRubegni Ede Halleux PFinney J(2024)MicroCode: live, portable programming for children via roboticsAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686334(1-3)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672539.3686334
Abeldaño RBakala EHitta SPires A(2024)"This is like a toy, it already got me": Results of Two Usability Studies of Robotito VPL App with Teachers: Robotito VPL Usability EvaluationsProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3659418(919-923)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3659418
Hartley KRubegni EUnderwood LFinney JBall THodges SDe Halleux PDevine JAnderson EMoskal M(2024)Meet MicroCode: a Live and Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bitProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3656995(355-370)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3656995
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

A robotics-based approach to foster programming skills and computational thinking: Pilot experience in the classroom of early childhood education

Recommendations

Developing Computational Thinking through a Virtual Robotics Programming Curriculum

Computational thinking describes key principles from computer science that are broadly generalizable. Robotics programs can be engaging learning environments for acquiring core computational thinking competencies. However, few empirical studies evaluate ...
Teaching how to teach computational thinking
ITiCSE 2018: Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education

Computational Thinking is argued to be an essential skill for the workforce of the 21st century. As a skill, Computational Thinking should be taught in all schools, employing computational ideas integrated into other disciplines. Up until now, questions ...
Computational thinking in high school courses
SIGCSE '10: Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education

The number of undergraduates entering computer science has declined in recent years. This is paralleled by a drop in the number of high school students taking the CS AP exam and the number of high schools offering computer science courses. The declines ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

TEEM'18: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality

October 2018

1072 pages

ISBN:9781450365185

DOI:10.1145/3284179

Editor:
Francisco José García-Peñalvo
University of Salamanca

Copyright © 2018 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

In-Cooperation

University of Salamanca: University of Salamanca

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 24 October 2018

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article
Research
Refereed limited

Conference

TEEM'18

TEEM'18: Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality

October 24 - 26, 2018

Salamanca, Spain

Acceptance Rates

TEEM'18 Paper Acceptance Rate 151 of 243 submissions, 62%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 496 of 705 submissions, 70%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

30
Total Citations
View Citations
677
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)66
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5

Reflects downloads up to 23 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Underwood LBall THodges SRubegni Ede Halleux PFinney J(2024)MicroCode: live, portable programming for children via roboticsAdjunct Proceedings of the 37th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology10.1145/3672539.3686334(1-3)Online publication date: 13-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3672539.3686334
Abeldaño RBakala EHitta SPires A(2024)"This is like a toy, it already got me": Results of Two Usability Studies of Robotito VPL App with Teachers: Robotito VPL Usability EvaluationsProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3659418(919-923)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3659418
Hartley KRubegni EUnderwood LFinney JBall THodges SDe Halleux PDevine JAnderson EMoskal M(2024)Meet MicroCode: a Live and Portable Programming Tool for the BBC micro:bitProceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference10.1145/3628516.3656995(355-370)Online publication date: 17-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628516.3656995
Agbo FOkpanachi LOcheja POyelere SSani G(2024)How can Unplugged Approach Facilitate Novice Students’ Understanding of Computational Thinking? An Exploratory study from a Nigerian UniversityThinking Skills and Creativity10.1016/j.tsc.2023.101458(101458)Online publication date: Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2023.101458
Jiménez MZapata-Cáceres MRomán-González MRobles GMoreno-León JMartín-Barroso E(2024)Computational Concepts and their Assessment in Preschool Students: An Empirical StudyJournal of Science Education and Technology10.1007/s10956-024-10142-833:6(998-1020)Online publication date: 9-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-024-10142-8
Metin ŞBaşaran MSeheryeli MRelkin EKalyenci D(2024)Adaptation of the Computational Thinking Skills Assessment Tool (TechCheck-K) in Early ChildhoodJournal of Science Education and Technology10.1007/s10956-023-10089-233:3(365-382)Online publication date: 2-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-023-10089-2
Bratitsis TTsapara MMelliou KBusuttil LVassallo DCallus JMeireles GKoliakou IKojok NSousa S(2024)Cultivating Computational Thinking in Early Years Through Board Games. The Cthink.it ApproachSmart Mobile Communication & Artificial Intelligence10.1007/978-3-031-56075-0_8(78-89)Online publication date: 20-Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56075-0_8
Metin SBasaran MKalyenci D(2023)Examining coding skills of five-year-old childrenPedagogical Research10.29333/pr/128028:2(em0154)Online publication date: 2023
https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/12802
Bálint-Svella ÉZsoldos-Marchiș I(2023)Óvodapedagógusok véleménye a technológiai területhez kapcsolódó képességek fejlesztéséről az óvodábanMagyar Pedagógia10.14232/mped.2023.4.209123:4(209-226)Online publication date: 31-Dec-2023
https://doi.org/10.14232/mped.2023.4.209
Bakala EPires ATejera GHourcade J(2023)“It will surely fall”: Exploring Teachers’ Perspectives on Commercial Robots for PreschoolersProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on Information Technology for Social Good10.1145/3582515.3609570(477-486)Online publication date: 6-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582515.3609570
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents