The term "robot" was the brainchild of Czech playwright, novelist, and journalist Karel Čapek who introduced the term in one of his plays, Rossum Universal Robots or R.U.R. (1920). The term refers to hard work, based on the Czech word robota. Robots have become a part of our life, especially helping our children develop soft skills. With time, robots have evolved, and today, we have arrived at educational robots. Collaborative learning using robots is known as educational robotics.

Educational Robotics- What Is It?

Educational robotics is a collaborative learning environment based on the use of robots. Educational robotics is also known as pedagogical robotics. The primary objective is to introduce children to robotics and computer programming from a very young age.

It teaches the design, application, analysis, and overall operation of a robot. This aspect comes under STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education, now known as STEAM education, with the inclusion of art, recognizing that Art is a crucial component to learning. The main difference between STEM and STEAM is the inclusion of Art in the educational method.

Educational robotics provides all the necessary knowledge to young students to design, build, program, and, ultimately, make a robot that can perform various tasks. The main advantage of STEAM education, especially in educational robotics, is that it allows young students to learn all these subjects through practice and experimentation. By going through each experiment, they learn key aspects of various problems and find a unique way to approach those problems to solve them.

History of Educational Robotics:

From ancient times, our ancestors have been building mechanical systems. The first educational robots were found during the Second World War, around the mid-1940s. It was said that the robot belonged to Japan. In 1954, the first American robot toy appeared in a Sears Christmas book. After 1956, Japan started to manufacture battery-based robot toys and export them to the U.S. Shortly after that, Japan became the leader in manufacturing educational robots.

How Do Educational Robotics Benefit Students?

Educational robotics, in general, helps students to develop various skills. At an earlier stage, students can start to learn one of the primary and most essential skills: computational skills. This is one of the basic cognitive skills of mathematical thinking. Computational skill is primarily defined as the ability to perform basic mathematical operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division quickly and accurately using mental methods and mediums such as pen-paper and calculators.

Apart from computational thinking, educational robotics allows students to learn skills such as:

• Collaboration: Collaboration is essential not only in robotics education but also in every field. The skill can be developed by a group challenge, which allows the students to learn the importance of socializing and evaluating each group member’s skills.
• Failure management: In a group challenge,  students come together and may face failures that can pave the way for working on a unique and effective solution.
• Creativity and imagination: One of the most challenging processes is finding ways to add functions to the robot. The learning process allows students to develop and enhance their creativity and imagination skills.
• Self-awareness: Robotics is a difficult subject, especially for young students. Building a robot toy and programming it, gives an opportunity for students to understand why they are carrying out the steps in a particular way. It helps them gain the freedom to change things about themselves and enables them to find unique solutions.
• Adaptability: Due to exponential growth in technology, especially in robotics, students can adapt to critical situations easily in the future by getting familiar with robotics from a very young age, and developing multiple crucial life skills.
• Self-Assessment: You can see the result in real-time at a rapid rate. This can be an excellent opportunity for students to perform self-assessment tests. It will help them see which area they must improve upon to get better results.

Besides the above skills, educational robotics enables young students to learn computer science, mainly computer programming. Nowadays, almost all robot toys for young students require coding, a skill that is becoming more and more important in nearly every field. Educational robotics uses a programming technique called "Block coding."

Block coding is a programming technique where students must drag and drop blocks containing a set of lines of code to perform a particular function. Students will drop the block in the working environment (an environment where students can perform various actions to get the desired output).

With block coding, students can eliminate the debugging phase, saving a lot of time. In addition, block coding is a visual representation, meaning that students can identify the blocks easily using the color codes. Block coding is a significant first step toward learning a programming language and ultimately paves the way for multiple life and work skills.

Botzees Toys is a Best Fit for Educational Robotics

Botzees toys are one of the best online educational robotic kit providers. They offer innovative and fun educational robot toys that develop your children's skills and enhance their education through fun and imaginative STEAM-based play. Botzees toys' primary focus is to develop your children's skills through Create, Program, and Play. Botzees toys created the educational robots based on Montessori's Sensitive Period Theory and Piaget's Cognitive Development Theory. It consists of five levels, they are:

• Level 1: Cognitive ability: To develop basic skills such as identification of color, shape, characters, and letters
• Level 2: Hands-on ability: To develop motor and problem-solving skills through simple assembling and disassembling of the robot toy.
• Level 3: Creation ability: To develop creativity by providing necessary building blocks to create a free and imaginative robot toy.
• Level 4: Concentration ability: To develop self-confidence through space construction and immerse in the experience
• Level 5: Logical ability: To develop logical thinking, constructive thinking, and computational thinking through the assembly and programming of the robot toy

FAQs:

What is educational robotics?

Educational robotics, also known as pedagogical (teaching) robotics, is a collaborative learning environment based on using robots to introduce children to STEAM: Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics.

How do students benefit from Educational robots?

Students can start to learn one of the primary and most essential skills: computational skills, which is one of the basic cognitive abilities of mathematical thinking.

What are the types of educational robotics?

There are four types of educational robotics:

1. Physical-based coding robotics
2. Introductory programmable robotics
3. Kit-based programmable robotics
4. Computer programmable robotics

Final Thoughts:

In this rapidly changing world, adaptation and developing new skills are essential. Educational robotics is a significant first step towards achieving and enhancing students' skills via STEAM. Botzees toy robots offer multiple avenues for the development of cognitive processes while also building other important life skills such as social interaction and cooperation.