This Master's thesis deals with activities which use LEGO Mindstorms robots in order to teach programming. The activities are based on the constructionist learning theory, which Seymor Papert describes as a way of learning that enables pupils to acquire new knowledge by active learning, using meaningful product as constructions in the physical world and the learner experiences. In terms of content, the activities belong to the cross-curricular connection of the optional subject Robotics in Technology. They were tested on pupils of the second and third cycles of primary school. While performing the activities, the modern approach of teaching programming based on the ʺMaker movementʺ was used. The pupils developed their computational thinking through concepts, practice and perspective.
The thesis describes the study which is based on the programming teaching model using LEGO Mindstorms robots. Two workshops were organized and executed. The first one was carried out with randomly selected pupils of the chosen school, aged between 12 and 14. The second workshop included pupils who were identified as gifted by their teachers. The aim of the study was to discover whether the pupils acquired the concepts of programming (instruction sequence, mesh, conditional statement) through practice. In addition, pupils' attitude towards LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set was also studied. Another point of interest was the question whether there were any statistically relevant differences regarding gender and success of the pupils when it comes to their understanding and use of the programming concepts.
The purpose of the findings is to show computer science teachers an example how to use robots in order to learn and teach programming and to encourage them to introduce the teaching of programming concepts to their lessons using the ʺmakerspaceʺ approach.
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