Learning Computational Thinking With Robotics In Middle School Assisted With Augmented Reality And Mobile Devices

Digital native generations have been technology consumers all their lives, but they have never created anything with it and they have no idea how these technologies work. Computational thinking has not been fostered within the digital-native generations, in a way to encourage the development of other important skills, such as reasoning, problems solving, logic, creativity, perseverance and working as part of a team. These skills are a basic mechanism for the day-to-day life and for the understanding of STEM subjects like mathematics, physics, technology or science. We aim that our children should be educated to be capable of contributing to that digital frame with maturity and critical attitude. To do that, children should learn how to program from a very early stage at school and to familiarize with electronics and mechanical topics; for that reason, robotics is the perfect discipline to combine all of them. Only teachers with an electronic background dare to make use of isolated electronic components. Therefore, we offer a methodology supported by a book and on-line resources to teach robotics with Arduino and Scratch. Firstly, an introduction to electronics topic and a basic programming with a graphical language and, finally, gathering all that knowledge to build up a robot from scratch. In order to guide students and teachers on how to correctly assembly the electronic components, augmented reality will also be used. This paper describes the development of an augmented reality book that can be used by students to learn electronics and computer programming. Students whether they are alone, in groups, at home or in the classroom can use mobile devices (smartphones or tablets) through augmented reality to help them in the electronics assembly. We believe that the use of augmented reality will change significantly the teaching activities by enabling the addition of supplementary information that they will be able to see on a mobile device and complement the other supplied materials. As a result, the young aged 12 to 16 will learn how to program, topics of electronics and how to build a robot, while they are developing their computational thinking and reinforcing their knowledge about science, physics, mathematics, oral and written expression, while working in a group, among others skills.