Abstract:

Using humanoid robots such as NAO from Softbank Robotics for middle and high school as well as university education might not be commonplace yet, however, it is spreading slowly with more and more individual concepts. Using humanoid robots for the education of elementary school children is an even more exotic occurrence, especially in Germany. Add to that the idea of having this age group program such robots, the available concepts become very scarce.

The Robotikum is a workshop concept targeting middle school, high school and university students. Humanoid robots are used to introduce computational thinking, problem solving strategies and constructivism into (German) school education. Students learn to program the NAO robots in a project-based way using a visual programming software and work collaboratively in small teams to achieve their project goals. This project is running successfully since 2018 in the district of Marburg-Biedenkopf in Germany.

Local elementary schools have shown great interest in being included in this project so that the project team RoboPraX has developed a new workshop concept, the Junior-Robotikum, for this target group using the Open Roberta® Lab from the Fraunhofer Society for NAO. NAO robots are usually programmed with the company provided visual programming software Choregraphe, however, this software is only available in English and therefore not feasible for German elementary school children. Furthermore, the handling of the software Choregraphe with its various features, windows and options can be overwhelming for this young target audience. In comparison, the Open Roberta® Lab offers various languages, including German, as interface language and a smaller range of available options as well as windows, making it easier for children to cope. The Open Roberta® Lab is a free-of-charge available visual programming platform targeting younger children and programming novices, similar to the widely used and well-known block-based visual programming language Scratch. Compared to other programming platforms the Open Roberta® Lab allows students to program many different robots, microcontrollers and even virtual robots using the same visual programming platform and language.

The workshop designed for elementary schools is a one-day concept spanning four to six hours. The course couples introductory input and discussion phases with hands-on programming as well as a lessons learned section. The project tasks for the children are clearly outlined, however, they leave enough space for creativity to foster individual approaches.

References:
[1] Khanlari A. Effects of educational robots on learning STEM and on students’ attitude toward STEM. 2013 IEEE 5th International Conference on Engineering Education. p. 62-66. 2013.
[2] Fraunhofer Institut, Open Roberta Website. 2021, Retrieved on February 2nd 2021 from https://www.open-roberta.org/

Keywords:

Primary education, humanoid robots, STEM education, education technology, NAO.