Learning robotics: a review

Purpose of Review: With the growing interest for STEM/STEAM, new robotic platforms are being created with different characteristics, extras and options. There are so many diverse solutions, that it is difficult for a teacher/student to choose the ideal one. This paper intends to provide an analysis to the most common robotic platforms existent on the market. The same is happening regarding robotic events all around the world, with objectives so distinctive, and with complexity from easy to very difficult. This paper also describes some of those events which occur in many countries. Recent Findings: As the literature is showing, there has been a visible effort from schools and educators to teach robotics from very young ages, not only because robotics is the future, but also as a tool to teach STEM/STEAM areas. But as time progresses, the options for the right platforms also evolves making difficult to choose among them. Some authors opt to first choose a robotic platform and carry on from there. Others choose first a development environment and then look for which robots can be programmed from it. Summary: An actual review on learning robotics is here presented, firstly showing some literature background on history and trends of robotic platforms used in education in general, the different development environments for robotics and finishing on competitions and events. A comprehensive characterization list of robotic platforms along with robotic competitions and events is also shown

How an Ambitious Informatics Curriculum Can Influence Algebraic Thinking of Primary School Children.

In this paper we describe the special case of an informatics curriculum implemented in a primary school, and the observed learning outcomes. The particularity of this curriculum is based on both the variety of the contents and on their apparent complexity. The children experienced different programming languages, including one text-based, and became confident with many educational robotics kits such as Lego WeDo, MBot and Arduino. During this path, children appeared strongly involved also in dealing with complex challenges and seemed to have developed their mathematical thinking. In particular, even if they had never worked with the formal structures of algebra during the math classes, children appeared confident with the concept of variable found in programming. For this reason, we decided to investigate whether these competencies applied even to mathematics, using a well-known national test developed to gauge the level of skills and selecting some questions related to algebra and designed for 8th grade students. The results that emerged were encouraging, suggesting that informatics could be useful in reinforcing algebraic thinking and introducing some mathematical concepts particularly complex for many students, such as variables