My inspiration today for writing
this piece of blog is a tiny baby robot called Beebot that we have introduced
in our early year classes. The more I play with it the more I end up loving the
gadget. The more I explore the more I am amazed with its hidden potential to
engage kids in innovative and creative learning experiences.
Why
beebots? This programmable toy robot was awarded as the most impressive
hardware for kindergarten and early primary school children on the World
Education Technology market BETT 2006. It works on the principle of Logo
(programming language designed by Seymour Pappert in 1967, has an easy to use
user interface, a few simple to use keys, remembers 40 instructions, has a bee
like structure).
Research says that children need
to learn in a concrete learning environment, to create hands on experiences with
their surroundings (Beaty, 1984), so our Beebot seems to be a good choice here
since it lets children manipulate them through programming, help them to begin
to thinking and solve problems in a real context.
Kate Highfields et al (2008)
writes in her paper that Beebot has the potential to enhance children’s
development of mathematical concepts, particularly transformation and
mathematical process much earlier than traditionally expected. Hoyles & Noss, 2003 say that beebots help
to engage children in a process of reflection and action, which leads to
abstract thinking. These cognitive processes are important for the development
of cognitive infrastructure in mathematics learning.
Before I go into the details of
how our teachers are using this tiny robot to make both teaching and learning a
unique experience in classrooms, let’s explore what’s happening around the
world. I got to skim through an interesting paper titled “Using a programmable
toy at a pre-school age, why and how” (SIMPAR, 2008) while looking for evidence
to support the use of this tiny robot in our curricula. What I came across was amazing and here are
the findings. British curriculum
recommends practitioners to use programmable toys to support learning. Their
curriculum introduces programmable toys as example for developing knowledge and
understanding of the contemporary world. Australian ICT Learning Innovation Center
department of Queensland Government has even published a special document
containing valuable teacher’s ideas for using programmable toys in kindergarten
and primary schools. The introduction of cost effective programmable toys in
Australian classrooms is increasing and there growing evidence that these toys
have a potential role to play in developing mathematical concepts. Similarly
Robotics plays an important role in the Brazilian Curricula where children are
encouraged to build models from Lego parts.
Now coming to our own
experience of using the beebots. Both the response from teachers and students
is over whelming. They consider it as an add on resource in the early year classroom
and are of the point of view that this piece of technology definitely has the
potential to engage children in meaningful learning experiences. Though the
initial use is for simple tasks. In one of the lessons observed teacher had
made a math’s number grid, children got the opportunity to practice addition
and subtraction. Children were supposed to add or subtract two numbers, move
the beebots to the correct answer block, interesting way to reinforce the
taught concept of addition and subtraction.
In another lesson observed
teacher had used beebots for color, pattern and shape recognition. In a
language and literacy lesson teacher had used the beebots for letter, sound and
sight word recognition. Students were supposed to program the beebots to identify
the letter along with sound. One of the most interesting lessons was where the
teacher had used the beebots for storytelling, included identification of the characters,
and sequence of the events. Students had to program the beebot to move to
different scenes in the story, talk about the scenes and characters etc. In a
Knowledge and Understanding lesson teacher had planned an activity where
students had to dress the beebots as different animal and move the beebots to
their respective habitats.
During our training
session with teachers regarding the effective use of technology in early years,
teachers came up with some really good ideas to use the beebots in classrooms. One
of the group of teachers suggested a snake and ladder game activity with
beebots (for number recognition).
Another group came up with the idea of
exploring own town or city using a beebot, a grid could be made and different
areas could be labelled. Students could be asked to find different routes to
destination, add street signs and talk about safety, could pretend beebots is a
school bus picking students up. The activity could be extended, beebots could
be dressed up as a delivery man, a town could be created using cardboards and
cut outs, beebots could visit different houses and drop the delivery items.
Teachers could
actually create a world map and students could explore the different oceans,
continents, countries etc using the beebots. One group suggested an activity
where beebots is part of a race, students program the beebots to identify the
number sequence and reach the finish point. Another activity was dressing beebots
as Mr Beebot and sending him to a shopping expedition, on the way Beebot uses
the money to shop for different items. The ideas shared showed a good
understanding of the teachers regarding the use of beebots, which had developed
over a short period of time.
Just to add to the above list of
activities, I cameacross a few interesting activities on the internet. One of
them was dressing the beebots as detectives, in this activity students work
collaboratively to develop a series of clues related to a series of pictures
they have placed on the mat, for example it can contains pictures of zoo
animals taken during a zoo trip. Another activity was about creating a beebots course,
students could be provided with a range of concrete materials like blocks,
boxes and manipulative, students could be asked to create a beebots course. Teacher could plan a
beebots car racing activity and design a race track mat. Students can learn
route and sequence planning while maneuvering Bee-Bot through the race track's
twists and turns. This can be done with multiple Bee-Bots which in turn can
inspire time trials and competitive route mapping.
The list
of ideas and activities about the use of beebots is endless but what is
important now is that teachers need to understand that technology use in
classrooms has to be clearly linked to an educational purpose. It has to be fit for purpose, not just for the
sake of using technology, only then we will be able to harness the full potential
technology.
In the
end this is to our digital kids who are growing with technology, it’s because
of them that we need to frequently play with technology, in order to be in a position
to create learning experiences they are comfortable with, kids who
compel us to explore more, who have emerged as more confident users of technology
then their digital immigrant parents and teachers, and are more them willing to
explore the new gadgets never encountered before, during their journey on a
digital terrain.
Happy Reading J
Sheeba Ajmal
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