Abstract:

With this poster we intend to describe an experiment that had taken place on Madeira Island – Portugal. Its aims are to understand how the use of robots as mediators’ artifacts of the learning of mathematics contributes to the students development of mathematical communication, mathematical reasoning and ability to problem solving in mathematics. We pretend they produce meaning and increase the learning of specific mathematical topics and concepts of the 7th grade of basic education. This research is being undertaken under the activities of project DROIDE II - Robots in Mathematics and Informatics Education.
In this poster we want to portray evidence of mathematical learning and others, when students have an active and central role in the construction of their knowledge. It is intended to highlight the contribution of robots to the involvement and enthusiasm of the students in mathematics learning process.

It was proposed to students that they create a race track car (robots) so that everyone had the same probability of winning. In this track, it was necessary to design courses in a way there are no clashes between the cars. It had to be programmed to start the race so it is given the starting signal (use of sound sensor) and stop when they reach the goal (using the light sensor), all of this in an autonomous way.

It had been suggested to perform 10 runs, to record the times of each race car and, with this data, make a statistical study of the situation, where students formulated conclusions regarding the data, established generalizations beyond the data collected.
We adopted a methodology that values work in which students conjecture, raise questions, problematize, and formulate explanations and arguments.

In this work with robots, the main concern was to create a learning scenario and exploit it in order to contribute to the construction of the student's knowledge.

The research reported in this communication was prepared within the Project DROIDE II - Robots in Mathematics and Informatics Education funded by Fundação para a Ciência Tecnologia under contract PTDC/CPE-CED/099850/2008.

Keywords:

Robots, Learning, Mathematics.