Abstract:

Automata are fascinating mechanical toys, small kinetic art sculptures. An automata might be seen as a syncretism between engineering, cultural awareness and artistic expression. Automata are constituted by two fundamental parts: on the one hand, a figure, or a set of figures, that can represent an idea or narrative; on the other hand, a mechanism allowing the movement of the figure (s). A pedagogical approach to use automata in class can be based on the combination of narratives and mechanical movement toys, using science stories suitable for young children. Automata can be built to represent characters or scenes in the story.

The automata for STEM project aims to explore the use of automata (moving toys) as a strategy to plan and implement contextualized and interdisciplinary activities in STEM. This work describes one of the automata developed in the scope of the project. It is a bird made from paper, and cardboard that makes bird like movements when constructed. STEM subjects can be introduced when constructing the Jellybird, namely geometric shapes and types of motion. When constructing the Jellybird, children need to use their spatial imagination to visualize how the parts will fit together and what the bird will finally will look like. In this scope, the teacher can talk with the children about the different parts, their shapes and placement, e.g. 'The body is round, but not a circle. It is oblong and pointed at one end. There is a left-hand side and a right-hand side of the body' or 'The wings are rectangles. A rectangle has four sides and is oblong. There will be one wing on either side of the bird. The Jellybird example is designed for children from 4 to 7 years old. The teacher can adapt suggestions to their own class and context and plan their own activity and adapt the idea to other ages.

In order to promote inclusive resources and activities, Jellybird pedagogical guidelines and instructions were adapted for children with visual impairment, namely the description of the geometric shapes and the motion involved in the moving toy. This work was developed taking in account previous evidences about difficulties experienced by blind children in obtaining the concept of geometry directly as well as difficulties faced by teachers in explaining those shapes. Losing of visual experience in blind students causes some difficulties in obtaining the concept of geometry, so the tactile experiences are crucial for information processing as well as oral statements about shapes. These must have a balance between detailed description and comparison with daily experiences of the children. Comparisons with the human body (body shema) emerged as an important strategy to descried shapes and notion to blind children involved in Jellybird construction.

Keywords:

Moving toys, mental representation, geometric shapes, visual impairment.