Abstract:

Understand how the use of robots as artifacts mediators of learning contributes to young people produce meaning and learning topics and develop mathematic and informatics concepts, is the goal of the project “DROIDE II - Robots in Mathematics and Informatics Education." It is within this project that we present this communication, which is intended to describe an experiment conducted with one groups of students of the 2nd and 3rd grades (forty kids), from the same school, working together (24 and 16 students, respectively). The school where the data were collected is located in the city of Funchal, capital of the Madeira Island - Portugal.
The work with the students adopted a project methodology because we defend classroom practices that focus “structures of participation in which students are entitled, expected, and obligated to propose conjectures, raise questions and problems, and formulate explanations and arguments, rather than only being entitled to answer questions and solve problems given by the teacher.” (Greeno, 2011, p.46)
The research team, together with the class teachers and students, created a scenario in which accountability by the learning process was shared by all the participants.
In the described project, students were initially introduced with Lego buildings and other buildings made of Lego Mindstorm material, in which some of them were robots and others not. The purpose was that students discover/discuss the attributes of an artifact that transforms it into a robot. We tried to make students understand the difference between an artifact that is a robot and what is not, extending the idea of what is actually a robot. At a later stage, the students learned to build robots and program them. Then they created a story whose characters were the previously built robots.
With this communication we intend to portray our experience, characterizing the participants, the methodology of work that was implemented, the description of the artifacts - robots, the relation between participants and robots, the participation patterns revealed in this type of work, trying to emphasize the contributions arising from participation in digital social environments for student learning.

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

References:
Greeno, J.G. (2011) A Situative Perspective on Cognition and Learning in Interaction In: Koschmann. T. (Ed.) Theories of Learning and Studies of Instructional Practice, Explorations in the Learning Sciences, Instructional Systems and Performance Technologies,1, (pp. 41-71). Springer Science+Business Media

Keywords:

Robots, Early years, Project work.