Abstract:

Digital native generations have been technology consumers all their life but they never have created with it and not know how it works. Computational thinking have not been fostered in the digital-native generations in spite of encourage many others importants skills such as reasoning, problems resolution, logic, creativity, perseverance and working as a team. These skills are a basic mechanism for the day-to-day life and to understand STEM subject like mathematics, physics, technology or science. We aim that our children should be educated to be capable to contribute to that digital frame with a maturity and critical attitude. To do that the children should learn to program from the very early stage at the school and to familiarize with electronic and mechanical topics, for that reason, robotics is the perfect discipline to combine all of them. Only teachers with an electronic background dare to do use of isolated electronic components, therefore we offer a methodology supported by a book and on-line resources to teach robotics with Arduino and Scratch. Firstly, an introduction to electronics topic and a basic programming with a graphical language, and finally gathering all that knowledge to build up a robot from scratch. In order to guide to the students and teachers to make the correct assembly of the electronics components, augmented reality is used. This paper describes the development of an augmented reality book that can be used by students to learn programming and electronics. Students alone, in groups, at home or in the classroom can use mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) and augmented reality to help them in the electronics assembly. We believe that the use of augmented reality will change significantly the teaching activities by enabling the addition of supplementary information that is seen on a mobile device. As a result, the young aged 12 to 16 learn to program, topics of electronics and how to build a robot while they are developing their computational thinking and reinforcing their knowledge about science, physics, mathematics, oral and written expression or working group among others skills.

Keywords:

Computational thinking, Augmented Reality, Robotics, Hands-on, Electronics.