Educational Robotics. Gamifying the Classroom with Arduino

By completing this course, participants will be able to:

• Acquire new competences that enable them to improve their students’ knowledge and skills.
• Introduce their students programming languages and the digital era.
• Develop new teaching methods and programming tools to improve their teaching and their students’learning.
• Improve their digital competences and skills.
• Generate new job expectations among their students.
• Stimulate logical thinking and introduce basic knowledge on IT programming through video games and mobile phone apps.
• Create interactive their own Smartphone app with App Inventor.
• Get a general overview on how to use technology for teaching/learning.
• Get a critical view of the different tools they can use depending on the learning objectives – they will be able to choose the best tools according to different educational contexts.
• Get a practical introduction to programming without code by using blocks.

• DAY 1: Presentation of the course

Ice-breaking activities

Discovering gamifying prompted software (Kahoot!; Quizziz and Plickers)

• DAY 2: Introduction and installation of Scratch programming language

Providing teachers with support documents and materials on programming which may be used with students to develop their own projects.

Knowing the main options and functions in Scratch interface.

Creating a simple programme in Scratch.

• DAY 3: Scratch functions

Discovering blocks one by one.

Repetitions or loops.

Events and scenes.

Switching operators

Grouping calculations

Local and global lists

Lists display

• DAY 4: Robotics

Exploring robotic sets

Connection between robots and scratch

Motion and directions

• DAY 5: Final stages and project

Interacting with robots

Creating a project based on the teachers’ background and in a practical approach of the use of robotics in their classrooms

Present the project and test other projects presented in the course.

The methodology used is “learning by doing”, a hands-on approach based on research activities.

Therefore, the course has a very practical approach. Each of the participants will have the possibility of creating a game of their own so as to practise Scratch and App Inventor features and be able to pass this knowledge on to their students. Participants will be briefly introduced with a theoretical overview, combined with practice, on programming without code by means of using blocks.

Participants will get a critical overview of the different kind of tools that might be used regarding the learning objectives in each context; they will be able to choose the best tools according to the educational circumstances.

The skills acquired by the participants during the course can be used to:

• Foster the use of programmes to create stories, games and activities in an intuitive manner.
• Access to a new network of teachers across Europe inspires new ideas, teaching methods and problem solving.
• Make more engaging and motivating activities for students.
• Pulse the real state of the knowledge students have acquired.
• Be more effective as teachers, by spending more time on students rather than bureaucracy.
• Offer students more support on ICT.
• Introduce students with programming language basics.
• Improve their electronic design and layout skills.
• Acquire new competences on audio and video edition.