Coping with a virtual and abstract reality has become part of everyday life. Therefore, perceptions of what will constitute everyday life experiences for future generations are next to impossible to predict. One way of preparing young children for such a future is the implementation of teaching towards digital competence in curricula around the…

Learning computer programming is a challenging task for most beginners. Demotivation and learned helplessness are pretty common. A novel instructional technique that leverages the value-expectancy motivational model of student learning was conceptualized by the author to counter the lack of motivation in the introductory class. The result was a…

The main purpose of the study was to investigate K-2 children's development of computational thinking skills through an activity with Blue-Bot, a floor programmable robot. Twenty children between six and seven years old participated in the study. Children were engaged in problem-solving activities with the Blue-Bot to learn how to program it and…

In this article, we focus on how spatial knowledge can be articulated with the integration of programmable floor robots in the mathematics classroom. We describe the observation grid we conceived to take into account three distinct dimensions: spatial knowledge, robotics and computer programming. Then, we implement this tool to analyse mathematics…

Educational robotics are commonly present in kindergarten and primary school classrooms, particularly Bee-bot. Its ease of use allows the introduction of computer programming to young children in educational contexts from a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) perspective. Despite this rise, there are still few…

Guided play activities were developed so that coding clubs could promote computational thinking skills in preschool children. The clubs involved fifteen children aged between 2 and 4 years, including a group of children with communication difficulties. The children took part in an action-research scoping study over three coding clubs involving six…

Debugging is an over-looked component in K-12 computational thinking education. Few K-12 programming environments are designed to teach debugging, and most debugging research were conducted on college-aged students. In this paper, we presented debugging exercises to 6th-8th grade students and analyzed their problem solving behaviors in a…

While focusing on numeracy is essential in preschool classrooms with deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) children, it is also important that concepts of numeracy be taught in a way that incorporates executive functions, introduces computational thinking, and prepares students for life in a 21st-century world. Technology-enhanced teaching resources…

Social robot in service is radically changing the ways of performing tasks and it becomes a distinct and valuable nascent. To achieve persist autonomy, robotic systems implement a closed-loop consisting of at least planning, reasoning and acting phases. From the continual loop perspective, this paper presents the ROSPlan framework, as a task…

This study highlights the importance of an educational design that includes robotics and programming through a visual programming language as a means to enable students to improve substantially their understanding of the elements of logic and mathematics. Gaining an understanding of computational concepts as well as a high degree of student…

While programming was introduced to mathematics classrooms in the 1980s, emerging robotic technologies have encouraged more widespread integration of these technologies to support the development of K-12 students' mathematical reasoning. The recent emphasis of programming and computational thinking in K-12 education has highlighted the need to…

We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their performance was successfully aggregated into a…

Embodiment is a concept that has gained widespread usage within the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) community in recent years. In a general sense, embodiment is the notion that cognition arises not just from the mind, but also through our bodies' physical and social interactions with the world around us. HCI has employed this body-centric…

Prior work demonstrates the importance of introducing young children to programming and engineering content before gender stereotypes are fully developed and ingrained in later years. However, very little research on gender and early childhood technology interventions exist. This pilot study looks at N = 45 children in kindergarten through second…

Games-Based Learning systems, particularly those that use advances from Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) to provide adaptive feedback and support, have proven potential as learning tools. Taking their lead from commercial games such as Little Big Planet and SuperMarioMaker, these systems are increasingly turning to content creation as a learning…