Experience with Using Robots for Teaching Programming

The contribution deals with several robotic activities involving components such as gamepad, IoT Crowtail Starter Kit for micro:bit, micro:bits, mBot Ranger, Kitibot and Sparkfun moto:bit. These robots were used at Extracurricular Computer Science Activity at Computer Science Department, Natural Sciences Faculty, Matej Bel University. The aim is to give our future Computer Science teachers and students of Applied Computer Science an opportunity to teach and gain some experience with kids especially in the field of programming. The project lasts the second academic year and is very popular among people from the department and kids from primary schools as well. Thanks to REGIOgrant, we received funds to buy new robotic and programmable toys. The aim of the activity is STEM programming what includes Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. We suppose the robots we deal with are suitable tools to teach STEM method and popularize Computer Science among kids in primary school in Banska Bystrica. For future Computer Science teachers, it gives the opportunity to educate kids and work with robots which they can face in their future jobs in schools. Students of Applied Computer Science can achieve experience in teaching programming IoT as well.