Contributing to the development of Linguistic and Logical Abilities through Robotics

摘要

For children in primary schools, programming small robots is an amusing way to be introduced to technological activities. Core of our project is NQCBaby, an Italian based LOGO like language, pupil oriented rather than robot oriented: indeed concepts are used from the child world. S. Papert said:”small robots programmed in LOGO language ” [1993]. We had robots, but we had’t a LOGO for robots. So, we want NQCBaby looks similar to Logo so that children already introduced to turtles feel at ease with robots and interestingly discuss on differences. In our activities pupils begin using a very simple language, the essence of NQCBaby, to interact with the simplest robot RCX and then progress to an enriched language as their assembly experiences advance. The constructive pedagogical methodology (and consequently our tools) structures pupils ’ learning of NQCBaby language in several steps starting with NQCBaby01 up to NQCBaby05, as new hardware components are introduced to build different robots. Meanwhile children are introduced to NQC, the “true ” robot language, by looking at how their descriptions of the robots behaviors are translated in NQC, “in order to be understood”. This step-by-step learning activity is coordinated with children knowledge of their native language thus helping a correct development of linguistic and logical abilities in their first steps. A software environment, based on a precompiler from NQCBaby to NQC, is currently being developed for supporting the project principles where learning evolves from NQCBaby01 to NQCBaby05. do NOT use any Footer – it will be added by us later EuroLogo 2007 header – do not use it, it will be added by us Figure 1. Children assemble a robot, decide a behaviour, describe it in NQCBabyh, and look at the resulting definition in NQC; then they enter the next step to learn the next level NQCBabyh+1