Abstract:

Research in the field of educational robotics has demonstrated that children involved in experiential labs focused on building and programming of LEGO Mindstorms mobile robots enhance their: a) learning of concepts about Mathematics, Computer programming, Physics, and so on; b) visual-constructive abilities, reasoning and problem-solving skills; c) narrative and paradigmatic thinking (for a review see Caci, D'Amico & Cardaci, 2004; 2007). Robotics demonstrated to be useful as an educational tool also for subjects with mental retardation (D’Amico & Caci, 2005) and autism (i.e., Billard et al., 2006). Robots allow children to reason about the interaction between body (the vehicle, its sensors, actuators and effectors) and mind (the central processor, the programming tools) supporting the learning and the reasoning about constructivist process of adaptation to environment of human systems. However, low level technologies such as LEGO kits are limited in the kind of behaviors that subjects can designed and programmed.

Educational programming environments even more oriented towards the use of visual programming languages facilitates the exploration of computer science concepts and the expression of programming statements by novice students in virtual stages (Chiazzese et al., 2010). A more extensive programming practice is given by the recent Kodu Game Lab (Stolee et al., 2011), a 3D virtual stage for the creation of virtual worlds in which characters and objects fill the stage and programming rules able children to define complex behaviours, movements and interactions (Fristoe et al., 2010, Stolee, 2010).
Starting from this theoretical framework, this paper presents the research of an experiential learning lab based on combined use of LEGO® Mindstorm learning kit and Kodu Game Lab a game based programming environment. The experiential laboratory (32 hours) has involved 59 children of secondary schools in collaborative learning activities aimed to stimulate creativity, problem solving, storytelling, as well as programming skills. Starting from a collaborative designing of the story, children have developed Lego robots and virtual agents that properly programmed, act in real and virtual stages. The effectiveness of laboratory is being assessed using a pre-post test research design method. The following tests are used in the test-retest sessions: MT Reading Comprehension tasks (Cornoldi & Colpo, 1995); SPM Arithmetical problem solving tasks (Lucangeli et al., 2003); PML working memory tasks (D’Amico & Lipari, in press); SAVIO deductive and syllogistic reasoning tasks (D’Amico et al., 2001). Moreover, teachers have been requested to rate the scholastic achievement of children as well as different aspects of their behavior during lessons using a purposed questionnaire.

The research is included in the Project “Edutainment: education and entertainment in experiential learning labs” (http://edutainment.pa.itd.cnr.it), has been funded by Assessorato Regionale Istruzione e Formazione Professionale, Sicilia and promoted by MIUR, Agenzia Nazionale per lo Sviluppo dell’Autonomia Scolastica, Sicilia (ANSAS). Other partners are: Dipartimento di Psicologia, Palermo; Istituto per le Tecnologie Didattiche, CNR, Palermo; Istituto Comprensivo Buonarroti, Palermo; Children’s museum BIMPA, Palermo.

Keywords:

Collaborative learning, virtual worlds, robotics.