Preschool STEM Activities and Associated Outcomes: A Scoping Review

This review highlights the need for further investigation into the benefits of STEM activities in preschool children’s learning, girls’ engagement and learning of children with disabilities in the STEM field. The review process involved accessing 19 relevant studies from Scopus, ERIC and Google Scholar databases in March 2023. Through the synthesis of information from these studies, seven STEM activities were identified as effective in enhancing preschool children’s learning: educational robots, educational games, argumentative interactions, inquiry-based learning and engineering design, drawing and telling about engineers, free play and pretend play, and group membership. Each of these activities contributes to different learning outcomes for children. Moreover, the review emphasizes the importance of role-playing activities ‘as if’ engineers and scientists, facilitated by teachers, in fostering girls’ motivation and engagement in the STEM field from an early age. Long-term scientific interventions at home have a significant positive impact on the science literacy skills of deaf children. The implications of this review are particularly relevant for early childhood educators, as it provides valuable insights into the use of STEM activities to enhance children’s learning outcomes

What is a robot companion - friend, assistant or butler?

The study presented in this paper explored people's perceptions and attitudes towards the idea of a future robot companion for the home. A human-centred approach was adopted using questionnaires and human-robot interaction trials to derive data from 28 adults. Results indicated that a large proportion of participants were in favour of a robot companion and saw the potential role as being an assistant, machine or servant. Few wanted a robot companion to be a friend. Household tasks were preferred to child/animal care tasks. Humanlike communication was desirable for a robot companion, whereas humanlike behaviour and appearance were less essential. Results are discussed in relation to future research directions for the development of robot companions

Human-centred design methods : developing scenarios for robot assisted play informed by user panels and field trials

Original article can be found at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/ Copyright ElsevierThis article describes the user-centred development of play scenarios for robot assisted play, as part of the multidisciplinary IROMEC1 project that develops a novel robotic toy for children with special needs. The project investigates how robotic toys can become social mediators, encouraging children with special needs to discover a range of play styles, from solitary to collaborative play (with peers, carers/teachers, parents, etc.). This article explains the developmental process of constructing relevant play scenarios for children with different special needs. Results are presented from consultation with panel of experts (therapists, teachers, parents) who advised on the play needs for the various target user groups and who helped investigate how robotic toys could be used as a play tool to assist in the children’s development. Examples from experimental investigations are provided which have informed the development of scenarios throughout the design process. We conclude by pointing out the potential benefit of this work to a variety of research projects and applications involving human–robot interactions.Peer reviewe

The use of UTAUT and Post Acceptance models to investigate the attitude towards a telepresence robot in an educational setting

(1) Background: In the last decade, various investigations into the field of robotics have created several opportunities for further innovation to be possible in student education. However, despite scientific evidence, there is still strong scepticism surrounding the use of robots in some social fields, such as personal care and education; (2) Methods: In this research, we present a new tool named: HANCON model that was developed merging and extending the constructs of two solid and proven models: the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model to examine the factors that may influence the decision to use a telepresence robot as an instrument in educational practice, and the Post Acceptance Model to evaluate acceptability after the actual use of a telepresence robot. The new tool is implemented and used to study the acceptance of a Double telepresence robot by 112 pre-service teachers in an educational setting; (3) Results: The analysis of the experimental results predicts and demonstrate a positive attitude towards the use of telepresence robot in a school setting and confirm the applicability of the model in an educational context; (4) Conclusions: The constructs of the HANCON model could predict and explain the acceptance of social telepresence robots in social contexts

How do you Play with a Robotic Toy Animal? A long-term study of Pleo

Pleo is one of the more advanced interactive toys currently available for the home market, taking the form of a robotic dinosaur. We present an exploratory study of how it was interacted with and reflected upon in the homes of six families during 2 to 10 months. Our analysis emphasizes a discrepancy between the participants’ initial desires to borrow a Pleo and what they reported later on about their actual experiences. Further, the data suggests an apparent tension between participants expecting the robot to work as a ‘toy’ while making consistent comparisons with real pet animals. We end by discussing a series of implications for design of this category of toys, in order to better maintain interest and engagement over time

Overview of technologies for building robots in the classroom

This paper aims to give an overview of technologies that can be used to implement robotics within an educational context. We discuss complete robotics systems as well as projects that implement only certain elements of a robotics system, such as electronics, hardware, or software. We believe that Maker Movement and DIY trends offers many new opportunities for teaching and feel that they will become much more prominent in the future. Products and projects discussed in this paper are: Mindstorms, Vex, Arduino, Dwengo, Raspberry Pi, MakeBlock, OpenBeam, BitBeam, Scratch, Blockly and ArduBlock

Towards a narrative-oriented framework for designing mathematical learning

This paper proposes a narrative-oriented approach to the design of educational activities, as well as a CSCL system to support them, in the context of learning mathematics. Both Mathematics and interface design seem unrelated to narrative. Mathematical language, as we know it, is devoid of time and person. Computer interfaces are static and non-linear. Yet, as Bruner (1986; 1990) and others show, narrative is a powerful cognitive and epistemological tool. The questions we wish to explore are - - If, and how, can mathematical meaning be expressed in narrative forms - without compromising rigour? - What are the narrative aspects of user interface? How can interface design be guided by notions of narrative? - How can we harness the power of narrative in teaching mathematics, in a CSCL environment? We begin by giving a brief account of the use of narrative in educational theory. We will describe the environment and tools used by the WebLabs project, and report on one of our experiments. We will then describe our narrative-oriented framework, by using it to analyze both the environment and the experiment described