Abstract:

Within the scope of the post-doctoral project Kids Media Lab - Preschool Programming Technologies and Learning (https://www.kidsmedialab.pt and http://www.nonio.uminho.pt/kidsmedialab) whose main research question it involves understanding how children learn to program at preschool age, we idealize the integration of educational robotics in contexts of kindergarten (M. S. Miranda-Pinto & Osório, 2015); (M. dos S. Miranda-Pinto, 2016). In this communication we present the case The Kindergarten of Arcozelo das Maias that is located in the town of the same name, being the number of inhabitants, higher than 2000. It belongs to the parish of Arcozelo das Maias, Oliveira de Frades and District of Viseu.

We selected this Kindergarten for the curricular integration of robotics with KIBO Robot due to the availability of the Kindergarten Teacher, to develop the curriculum associated with this robot and which was developed by Professor Marina Bers (M. Bers, 2008); (Marina U Bers, 2014); (Rosenberg & Bers, 2014).
This research was developed in 2018, with a heterogeneous group of 13 children: 3 Years (2 Boy and 3 Girl), 4 Years (2 Boy and 0 Girl), and 5 Years (2 Boy and 4 Girl), for 3 months (April to June 2018). The curriculum will have 20hrs distributed in 7 classes in an average of 3 hours each.

The children showed a great interest in the great prehistoric animals, so working on this theme will allow the understanding of the correlation between the animals with their environment at different times and of some natural phenomena and their effects. With this you will have the opportunity to know those animals that lived on our planet millions of years ago.

The observations made during the activities with the KIBO robot were based on the analysis of videos of the sessions, photos and, still, the application of observation grids. “Positive Technological Development (PTD) Engagement Checklist: Environment & Facilitator” and the Positive Technological Development (PTD) Engagement Checklist: Children/Child (Marina U Bers, 2007); (Marina Umaschi Bers, Flannery, Kazakoff, & Sullivan, 2014).

It is relevant to say that the development of the curriculum over 3 months, despite the 20 hours planned for its implementation, gave rise to numerous parallel activities in various curricular areas on the life of dinosaurs. It was a comprehensive theme, worked on the curriculum of the KIBO robot, but it was fueled by the children's interest in playing day to day, in the exploration in an educational and family context. The children's motivation and commitment revealed that the learning of educational robotics with the KIBO tangible robot was undoubtedly a learning process that allowed the child to develop skills associated with different areas of knowledge and programming and robotics.

Keywords:

Robotics, Preschool, KIBO robot, Programming, Computational Thinking.