Educational robot – A way to promote interest in STEM subjects

Teaching was a rigid structure in the past, but nowadays an educational robot is a popular way to support young students. It allows them to obtain important abilities that will be helpful not only during their school period, but also, in their adult lives where scientific method, problem solving skills, inventiveness and teamwork are required to success.

The assortment of activities, informative programs, heterogeneous platforms, teaching resources and didactic philosophy included in scholastic robotic aids kids not to failure in their subjects. In the superior levels they learn how to handle real hardware as a way to be equipped for the challenges and requirements of the true physical work.

Robot roles in education

The first goal is to bring pleasant experiences to ease and motivate the pupils’ development of tools for the mechanical device operation stages. It can include articulated, mobile or autonomous machines of diverse scales. Secondly, the idea is to produce a positive attitude and facilitate the learning process of subjects as Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics known as STEM.

Besides robots can be considered as:

• Educational subject: even children in their 5 or 6 are able to study rudimentary algorithms and to program some actions. There are meccanos prepared to track their evolution and different competitions they can participate using their creations. Do you remember Big Hero 6 movie?
• Learning funding implements: they favor dedicated instructive activities. For example, simulation with meccanos is an exceptional tool to increase patient safety and care excellence in medical degrees. That means, robotic trainers help to perform more realistic coaching procedures.
• Telepresence option: consider tele-operated meccanos alternative to make “virtual classes” at schools accessible to sick or hospitalized kids.
• Professional assistants in the classrooms: there are daily tasks and actions teacher could delegate in these nice deputies, like to fill out the attendant list, welcome students by their names, control their behavior, etc., hence professors can focus on their fundamental pedagogical aimt.

In general, educational robots harden technological interest in the institutions; let creating interesting projects to transfer basic and specialized knowledge; constitute fantastic tools to introduce scientific approaches; and are ideal mechanisms to convert abstract material into real world applications.