The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of middle school students' perceptions of the ideal science student to their problem solving activity and conceptual understanding in the applied science area of robotics. Twenty-six 11 and 12 year-olds (22 boys) attending a summer camp for academically advanced students participated in the…

The IT-Adventures program is dedicated to increasing interest in and awareness of information technology among high school students using inquiry-based learning focused on three content areas: cyber defense, game design programming, and robotics. The program combines secondary, post-secondary, and industry partnerships in educational programming,…

For educational purposes it is not necessary to use expensive commercial-grade equipment to teach students about commonly used sensors. Schools frequently have limited funds for acquiring educational materials; therefore, purchasing sensors identical to those used in large-scale industry is not an option. By purchasing small-scale components that…

The purpose of the course presented here is to introduce freshmen to embedded systems using LEGO Mindstorms, under an ANSI-C programming environment. The students build their own LEGO robots, make programs for them using ANSI-C, and operate them. By creating these LEGO robots, the students become more motivated, learning the basic concepts of…

As robot technologies develop, many researchers have tried to use robots to support education. Studies have shown that robots can help students develop problem-solving abilities and learn computer programming, mathematics, and science. However, few studies discuss the use of robots to facilitate the teaching of second languages. We discuss whether…

In today's teaching and learning approaches for first-semester students, practical courses more and more often complement traditional theoretical lectures. This practical element allows an early insight into the real world of engineering, augments student motivation, and enables students to acquire soft skills early. This paper describes a new…

With the current curriculum focus on correlating classroom problem solving lessons to real-world contexts, are LEGO robotics an effective problem solving tool? This present study was designed to investigate this question and to ascertain what problem solving strategies primary students engaged with when working with LEGO robotics and whether the…

If we are to attract more women and minorities to computing we must engage students at an early age. As part of its mission to increase participation of women and underrepresented minorities in computing, the Increasing Student Participation in Research Development Program (INSPIRED) conducts computing academies for high school students. The…

From 2004-2007, the University of Memphis carried out the NSF-funded Tri-P-LETS (Three P Learning Environment for Teachers and Students) project to improve local high-school computer science curricula. The project reached a total of 58 classrooms in eleven high schools emphasizing problem solving skills, programming concepts as opposed to syntax,…

Project MLeXAI [Machine Learning eXperiences in Artificial Intelligence (AI)] seeks to build a set of reusable course curriculum and hands on laboratory projects for the artificial intelligence classroom. In this article, we describe two game-based projects from the second phase of project MLeXAI: Robot Defense--a simple real-time strategy game…

This study investigates young children's perspectives in explaining a self-regulating mobile robot, as they learn to program its behaviors from rules. We explore their descriptions of a robot in action to determine the nature of their explanatory frameworks: psychological or technological. We have also studied the role of an adult's intervention…

This report explores the first iteration of a teacher professional development courselet grounded in constructionist theory and activities. This online teacher professional development (oTPD) courselet provided opportunities for teachers to engage in just-in-time, ongoing TPD within a social networking site for educators. The topic of the oTPD was…

In this article we try to show how new devices and methods can help in the education of programming. At Kecskemét College programmable mobile robots and instead of behavioral, the constructivist pedagogical methods were used. Our experiments have proved our hypothesis as the improved new methodical education using devices can give more practical…

This article describes an outreach program to broaden participation in computing to include more students with visual impairments. The precollege workshops target students in grades 7-12 and engage students with robotics programming. The use of robotics at the precollege level has become popular in part due to the availability of Lego Mindstorm…

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a new computing paradigm that has been adopted by major computer companies as well as government agencies such as the Department of Defense for mission-critical applications. SOC is being used for developing Web and electronic business applications, as well as robotics, gaming, and scientific applications. Yet,…