Methodology:

• This course consists of input sessions, workshops, and presentations. It is highly interactive and participants are expected to take an active role in all sessions, experiencing and “learning by doing” methodologies.
• Participants (teachers) will be introduced to Mind Designer Robot, as well as free Mind Designer App that can be used in their own classrooms. They can also build upon what Mind Designer Robot and App is presented, and learn how to adapt and improve what they learn to suit their own and their students’ future needs.

Course description:

The training entitled ” Game based integration between the contents of teaching subjects using educational robotos ” is an innovative workshop course for teacher professional development, under the Erasmus+ Key Action 1: ‘Learning Mobility of Individuals’.

The course will focus on the implementation of STEM education – robotics, which will enable students aged 6 to 12 to make their first steps in science, technology and engineering in a fun way and through social inclusion, which will increase their digital skills, creativity, but above all the skills of problem solving, critical thinking, experimentation and teamwork that are key in the child’s life.

Considering the latest trends in the modern educational practice, where the correlation of the contents of the various teaching subjects is indicated as an approach that enables a more efficient acquisition of knowledge and their effective application in everyday life, this training focuses on presenting concrete examples for the correlation of the teaching contents of the teaching subjects: English language, ICT technology, art and mathematics, using educational robot Mind Designer. This course is a great opportunity for participant to create STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) activities in the classroom in a fun and creative way.

The course is set on the implementation of STEM education – robotics, which will enable students aged 6 to 15 to make their first steps in science, technology and engineering in a fun way and through social inclusion, which will increase their digital skills, but above all the skills of problem solving, critical thinking, experimentation and teamwork that are key in the student’s life.

The course activities will present to the participants, how to implement game based integration between the contents of teaching subjects using educational robots, improve communication, develop empathy, mutual assistance and inclusion in their school educational practice, increasing cooperation between children. Participants will acquire practical knowledge and will be offered familiarity with examples of good teaching practice, and they will be able to share their views and ideas with other course participants. Furthermore, they will be shown how to use educational robots in class. The training sessions will be led by experienced teachers and professors with first-hand experience in demonstrating innovative practice and useful educational resources.

The educational robot Mind Designer (which will be used in this course) is the new intelligent robot which introduces students to coding and design. It supports them as they discover arithmetic and geometry in an easy and fun way.  With innovative voice recognition included, Mind executes the voice commands the student gives it. With the exclusive free Mind Designer App students can experiment with block coding in the Coding Area, creating simple and more complex figures and then get Mind to draw them. Using the Arithmetic play board, Mind can be programmed to carry out calculations, and with the Robot Maze, students can have fun completing missions. But even more important is that, teachers will learn how to create their own blackboards, intended for the integration of other teaching subjects, that is, the realization of educational goals adapted to the needs of their students.

Skills focus:

• Creativity
• Self-expression
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Persistence
• Problem solving
• Implementation of STEM education
• Мutual assistance among students in the proces of learning and inclusion in school educational practice

Benefits

• Encourages students for cooperation and common decision-making
• Encourages students for critical thinking and finding possible solutions for specific problem situations from their everyday’s life
• Using educational robot Mind Designer can help children learn in a fun and creative way
• Explaining tedious concepts and information in a fun way
• The creative constraint of the medium encourages problem solving
• It’s a simple, hands-on technology that young children can achieve
• Fosters iteration and experimentation through trying and testing
• It offers students autonomy and ownership over the learning process and over their finished work, which in turn makes them proud and feel accomplished

Follow-Up: Participants will be given opportunities to create their own resources, which can then be shared, discussed, analyzed and, of course, taken away with them after the course to use and re-use in their own classrooms. A Facebook group (EASY4TEACHERS) will be created for all participants to allow discussion and comment to continue beyond the course.