Using assistive robots to promote inclusive education

Purpose: This paper describes the development and test of physical and virtual integrated augmentative manipulation and communication assistive technologies (IAMCATs) that enable children with motor and speech impairments to manipulate educational items by controlling a robot with a gripper, while communicating through a speech generating device. Method: Nine children with disabilities, nine regular and nine special education teachers participated in the study. Teachers adapted academic activities so they could also be performed by the children with disabilities using the IAMCAT. An inductive content analysis of the teachers’ interviews before and after the intervention was performed. Results: Teachers considered the IAMCAT to be a useful resource that can be integrated into the regular class dynamics respecting their curricular planning. It had a positive impact on children with disabilities and on the educational community. However, teachers pointed out the difficulties in managing the class, even with another adult present, due to the extra time required by children with disabilities to complete the activities. Conclusions: The developed assistive technologies enable children with disabilities to participate in academic activities but full inclusion would require another adult in class and strategies to deal with the additional time required by children to complete the activities. Implications for Rehabilitation Integrated augmentative manipulation and communication assistive technologies are useful resources to promote the participation of children with motor and speech impairments in classroom activities. Virtual tools, running on a computer screen, may be easier to use but further research is needed in order to evaluate its effectiveness when compared to physical tools. Full participation of children with motor and speech impairments in academic activities using these technologies requires another adult in class and adequate strategies to manage the extra time the child with disabilities may require to complete the activities.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Physical visualization of math concepts using Lego Mindstorms

Educational robotics has become one of the most effective methods to teach STEM concepts in a practical and didactic way at all educational level. In this context, the LEGO Mindstorms robotic platforms have been widely used due to their versatility ease of use and modularity. Despite this, most of the papers focus on K-12 and undergraduate levels, with little information reported in the literature about educational experiences at the graduate level. This article deals with the use of educational robotics for the teaching of mathematical concepts at the graduate level, and more specifically on the physical visualization of metrics (Euclidean, Taxicab, and Infinity), and the convergence of Cauchy sequence using a mobile robots LEGO Mindstorms NXT. The educational experience was applied to a group of graduate students who offered good comments on this type of educational activity and its usefulness to understand the mathematical concepts addressed. It was observed that this type of educational experiences motivates students to use mathematical concepts in interdisciplinary problems and encourages them to understand their functionality and application in the real worldPeer Reviewe

Development of skills in children with ASD using a robotic platform

The interaction and communication skills are essential to live in society. However, individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have a gap in these abilities which affects their daily life. Previous studies suggest that children with ASD demonstrate some positive behaviors in presence of a robotic platform. This study intends to evaluate the effect of a robotic platform on children with ASD, checking if the platform can be a stimulating agent for children's interaction, as well as a skill learning promoter. So, it is used the robot Lego Mindstorms NXT as a mediator/reward to encourage children with ASD to interact with others and also to learn some cognitive skills.The authors are grateful to teachers and students of the primary and secondary schools of Aver-o-Mar and their parents for their participation in the project. The authors are also grateful to the Portuguese Foundation for funding through the R&D project RIPD/ADA/109407/2009

Strategies for Digital Creative Pedagogies in Today’s Education

Creativity and digital technologies are considered to be central for success and development in the current society, becoming crucial educational objectives worldwide. Nevertheless, education often fails to keep pace with creative and digital economies; this is mainly because teachers are not prepared for adopting pedagogical strategies that foster creativity or for fully exploiting the educational potential of digital technologies. Based on the seminal theories of creativity, we propose an innovative framework for applying creative teaching practices mediated by digital technologies: in the light of constructivist and constructionist approaches, we suggest a series of digital tools which are particularly suitable to the emergence of creativity, i.e. manipulative technologies, educational robotics and game design and coding. Furthermore, we shape the concept of digital creative pedagogies (DCP) and establish a set of characteristic components of teaching practices which contribute to the development of students’ creativity. Drawing on a substantial body of research, the chapter intends to embed educational creativity in the digital culture

A Programming Workshop using the Robot "Thymio II": The Effect on the Understanding by Children

Robots are both fascinating objects for the general public and devices whose conception, understanding and pro- gramming involve many fields. This unique combination makes them an ideal tool for introducing science and technology to children. This paper presents the outcome of a programming workshop held on the occasion of the 2011 EPFL Robotics Festival. This workshop introduced programming using the robot “Thymio II”. The participants enjoyed this workshop very much, and their attitudes suggest that the public is attracted to such events out of interest rather than pure fun or educational concerns. Children appreciated the supervision, characterized by a high staff-per-child ratio of 1/3. We also show that in an hour of tutorial, children were able to acquire concepts such as the sensor or the loading of a program on the robot because they practised these enough. More theoretical and less practised concepts, such as the sensory-motor loop or the programming details, were not well understood. These findings now enable us to create better edutainment material

Teaching humanoid robotics by means of human teleoperation through RGB-D sensors

This paper presents a graduate course project on humanoid robotics offered by the University of Padova. The target is to safely lift an object by teleoperating a small humanoid. Students have to map human limbs into robot joints, guarantee the robot stability during the motion, and teleoperate the robot to perform the correct movement. We introduce the following innovative aspects with respect to classical robotic classes: i) the use of humanoid robots as teaching tools; ii) the simplification of the stable locomotion problem by exploiting the potential of teleoperation; iii) the adoption of a Project-Based Learning constructivist approach as teaching methodology. The learning objectives of both course and project are introduced and compared with the students\u2019 background. Design and constraints students have to deal with are reported, together with the amount of time they and their instructors dedicated to solve tasks. A set of evaluation results are provided in order to validate the authors\u2019 purpose, including the students\u2019 personal feedback. A discussion about possible future improvements is reported, hoping to encourage further spread of educational robotics in schools at all levels

Gamification for Maths and Physics in University Degrees through a Transportation Challenge

Our society is immersed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution due to the fast evolution of the new technologies that are modifying the labor market. In the near future, technologies related to Industry 4.0 will produce totally new goods and services. Therefore, the educational systems should adapt their programs to the future needs of an uncertain labor market. In particular, mathematics will play a key role in future jobs and there is a strong need to connect its teaching methodologies to the new technological scene. This work uses the STEAM approach (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) along with active methodologies and educational robotics with the aim of developing a new strategy for the application of mathematics and physics in an engineering degree. In particular, a transportation challenge is posed to tackle the teaching–learning process of the Bézier curves and their applications in physics. A pilot project is developed using a LEGO EV3 robot and an active methodology, where students become the center of the learning process. The experimental results of the pilot study indicate an increase in the motivation due to the use of robots and the realistic context of the challenge

Applying Math onto Mechanism: Investigating the Relationship Between Mechanistic and Mathematical Understanding

Physical manipulatives are commonly used to improve mathematical understanding. However, it is unclear when physical manipulatives lead to significant benefits. We investigated whether understanding the mechanism of a manipulative would affect mathematical use and understanding. Participants were asked to navigate a physical robot through a maze, and to create a strategy that could navigate differently sized robots through the same maze. Participants with a better understanding of the robot’s mechanism were more likely to utilize complex mathematical strategies during the maze task than participants with lower mechanistic understanding. These participants with higher mechanistic understanding also showed greater understanding of the mathematical relationships within the robot. The study provides evidence for a relationship between mechanistic understanding and mathematical understanding, suggesting that mechanistic manipulatives, upon which mathematics can be applied, may be especially beneficial for fostering mathematical understanding

Exploring the development of mental rotation and computational skills in elementary students through educational robotics

Interest in educational robotics has increased over the last decade. Through various approaches, robots are being used in the teaching and learning of different subjects at distinct education levels. The present study investigates the effects of an educational robotic intervention on the mental rotation and computational thinking assessment in a 3rd grade classroom. To this end, we carried out a quasi-experimental study involving 24 third-grade students. From an embodied approach, we have designed a two-hour intervention providing students with a physical environment to perform tangible programming on Bee-bot. The results revealed that this educational robotic proposal aimed at map-reading tasks leads to statistically significant gains in computational thinking. Moreover, students who followed the Bee-bot-based intervention achieved greater CT level compared to students following a traditional instruction approach, after controlling student's prior level. No conclusive results were found in relation to mental rotation