Sharing best practices about Digital DIY robotics in schools
(an interesting update from a project we met at the beginning of our research, from coordinator Prof. Tomasi)
The joint teams of the Erasmus Plus Project Human STEAM Lab participated in the Swedish finals of the Robocup Jr. that are going to take place in Linköping on March 25.
Members of the joint teams will be students belonging to Istituto Scolastico Alcide Degasperi (from Borgo Valsugana, Italy), Petreskolan 7-9 (from Hofors, Sweden) and I. Osnovna škola Varaždin (from Varaždin, Croatia), which will compete in the Rescue Maze and Rescue Line contest. Further to the first meetings that were held in Italy and Sweden and the continuous work performed through skype and WhatsApp, the participation to the RoboCup Jr. finals in Sweden is the first achievement of the Human STEAM Lab Project.
The objective of the Project is to take full advantage of the complementary experience and expertise of the three schools so to be able to share their best practice (with particular regards to those of the Human STEAM Lab and the Robotics/Robo-ethics initiative) and extend them to pupils in the schools. Besides, the project aims at developing a model of teaching that can then be extended to others in Europe. With regard to content, robotics, although not part of the formal school curriculum, is becoming increasingly common in schools, and is connected to STEM subjects. However, this project goes further, by linking science with humanities, technology innovation with the classical tradition that characterizes European culture. Hence, another key issue is the ability to integrate humanities also in the more technological and scientific aspects of
STEM subjects.
In order to achieve such goal, the project is exploiting the competences that students have in robotics (all three schools annually compete in RoboCup Jr. in Croatia, Italy and Sweden). The language skills of students will allow them to communicate with their peers, to share content already learned, providing material for personal and group elaboration, introducing the concept of Robo-ethics, and to stimulate further discussions on subjects such as literature, philosophy, cinema.
The idea then is to create synergies among schools to collaborate on common projects, in order to build and program a robot with which to participate in RoboCup Jr. competitions with an international team (Italy - Sweden, Croatia-Sweden, Italy-Croatia). This will be also an excellent opportunity to share all the humanities and scientific content addressed in the Human STEAM Lab.
Finally, we plan to document all phases of realization of the project to make it a case study at the European level.
Important announcement: on June 22nd, 2017, we will present the final results of our research in Milan. You are welcome to join, and thanks in advance for sharing the official announcement of the final DiDIY Conference: Digital Makers - Making a difference?
