An Experience of Introducing Primary School Children to Programming using Ozobots (Practical Report)

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2008.13566v2
• Date: Mon, 16 Aug 2021 04:40:37 GMT
• Title: An Experience of Introducing Primary School Children to Programming using Ozobots (Practical Report)
• Authors: Nina K\"orber, Lisa Bailey, Luisa Greifenstein, Gordon Fraser, Barbara Sabitzer, Marina Rottenhofer
• Abstract summary: A recent trend is to introduce basic programming concepts already very early on at primary school level. Schools and teachers are often neither equipped nor trained appropriately, and the best way to move from initial "unplugged" activities to creating programs on a computer are still a matter of open debate. We describe our experience of a small INTERREG-project aiming at supporting local primary schools in introducing children to programming concepts using Ozobot robots.
• Score: 10.213226970992666
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Algorithmic thinking is a central concept in the context of computational thinking, and it is commonly taught by computer programming. A recent trend is to introduce basic programming concepts already very early on at primary school level. There are, however, several challenges in teaching programming at this level: Schools and teachers are often neither equipped nor trained appropriately, and the best way to move from initial "unplugged" activities to creating programs on a computer are still a matter of open debate. In this paper, we describe our experience of a small INTERREG-project aiming at supporting local primary schools in introducing children to programming concepts using Ozobot robots. These robots have two distinct advantages: First, they can be programmed with and without computers, thus helping the transition from unplugged programming to programming with a computer. Second, they are small and easy to transport, even when used together with tablet computers. Although we learned in our outreach events that the use of Ozobots is not without challenges, our overall experience is positive and can hopefully support others in setting up first encounters with programming at primary schools.

Related papers

• From Keyboard to Chatbot: An AI-powered Integration Platform with Large-Language Models for Teaching Computational Thinking for Young Children [22.933382649048113]
  We present a novel methodology with an AI-powered integration platform to effectively teach computational thinking for young children. Young children can describe their desired task in natural language, while the system can respond with an easy-to-understand program. A tangible robot can immediately execute the decomposed program and demonstrate the program's outcomes to young children.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-05-01T04:29:21Z)
• NaijaCoder: Participatory Design for Early Algorithms Education in the Global South [2.8686437689115363]
  NaijaCoder is an organization that is dedicated to organizing a free, intensive summer program in Nigeria to teach the basics of algorithms and computer programming to high schoolers. We design a curriculum that is more conducive to the local environment while incorporating rigorous thinking and preparation.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-10-31T14:28:51Z)
• HomeRobot: Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation [107.05702777141178]
  Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation (OVMM) is the problem of picking any object in any unseen environment, and placing it in a commanded location. HomeRobot has two components: a simulation component, which uses a large and diverse curated object set in new, high-quality multi-room home environments; and a real-world component, providing a software stack for the low-cost Hello Robot Stretch.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-06-20T14:30:32Z)
• "It's Weird That it Knows What I Want": Usability and Interactions with Copilot for Novice Programmers [5.317693153442043]
  We present the first study that observes students at the introductory level using one such code auto-generating tool, Github Copilot, on a typical programming assignment. We explore student perceptions of the benefits and pitfalls of this technology for learning, present new observed interaction patterns, and discuss cognitive and metacognitive difficulties faced by students.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-04-05T15:07:50Z)
• Self-Improving Robots: End-to-End Autonomous Visuomotor Reinforcement Learning [54.636562516974884]
  In imitation and reinforcement learning, the cost of human supervision limits the amount of data that robots can be trained on. In this work, we propose MEDAL++, a novel design for self-improving robotic systems. The robot autonomously practices the task by learning to both do and undo the task, simultaneously inferring the reward function from the demonstrations.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-03-02T18:51:38Z)
• Giving Feedback on Interactive Student Programs with Meta-Exploration [74.5597783609281]
  Developing interactive software, such as websites or games, is a particularly engaging way to learn computer science. Standard approaches require instructors to manually grade student-implemented interactive programs. Online platforms that serve millions, like Code.org, are unable to provide any feedback on assignments for implementing interactive programs.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-11-16T10:00:23Z)
• Minecraft: An Engaging Platform to Learn Programming [0.0]
  This paper explores the benefits of using Minecraft Education Edition to teach Python programming. It has several benefits, including being highly engaging, sharpen creativity, and problem-solving skill.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-08-19T22:12:37Z)
• Can machines learn to see without visual databases? [93.73109506642112]
  This paper focuses on developing machines that learn to see without needing to handle visual databases. This might open the doors to a truly competitive track concerning deep learning technologies for vision.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-10-12T13:03:54Z)
• Exploring a Handwriting Programming Language for Educational Robots [1.310461046819527]
  This study presents the development of a handwriting-based programming language for educational robots. It allows students to program a robot by drawing symbols with ordinary pens and paper. The system was evaluated in a preliminary test with eight teachers, developers and educational researchers.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-05-11T12:00:34Z)
• How could Neural Networks understand Programs? [67.4217527949013]
  It is difficult to build a model to better understand programs, by either directly applying off-the-shelf NLP pre-training techniques to the source code, or adding features to the model by theshelf. We propose a novel program semantics learning paradigm, that the model should learn from information composed of (1) the representations which align well with the fundamental operations in operational semantics, and (2) the information of environment transition.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-05-10T12:21:42Z)
• Actionable Models: Unsupervised Offline Reinforcement Learning of Robotic Skills [93.12417203541948]
  We propose the objective of learning a functional understanding of the environment by learning to reach any goal state in a given dataset. We find that our method can operate on high-dimensional camera images and learn a variety of skills on real robots that generalize to previously unseen scenes and objects.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-04-15T20:10:11Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.