Educational Robotics Inclusive and Technology Education

Abstract

Computational thinking is a fundamental competence in the training. The fundamental motivation is to be found in the ability, which must be transversal, to learn methods of approach to problem solving. A skill that goes beyond simple problem solving but is configured as intelligence and as such can be trained and developed. At the same time, it becomes essential to put oneself in the perspective of an education that is inclusive. An education attentive to inclusion is an education attentive to the enhancement of the skills of each one to develop skills. On the other hand, we must pay continuous attention to emerging technologies, evaluating, and integrating them into learning paths, aware that they are integrated into a complex framework. Starting from these considerations, we intend to reflect and propose educational paths that use educational robotics not with the aim of learning the programming or the functions of an android, but configuring themselves as an innovative approach to teaching, a pedagogical method to increase the centrality of the student in the learning-teaching processes, promote an individualization aimed at the inclusion of all the children in the class. The background of this reflection is the focus of some eidetic structures that mark the new processes of knowledge in the world of robotics; this means going in search of the connective structures of robotic systems within the weaving of relationships with the context, then identifying the nodes that make the parts of the same system interdependent in relation to educational instances.

Keywords: Computational Thinking, Educational Robotics, Education, Inclusion

Introduction

M Developing a critical and objective analysis that deals with reality certainly has significant elements of difficulty.

It is objectively complex, a complexity that becomes more complicated when we talk about the younger generations and we are interested in and enter the world of children.

One of the first and most important difficulties arises from a kind of nostalgia for the time when we were children, a natural and uncontrolled impulse to compare what age has represented in our personal experience. It is easy to fall into a moralistic reading of this growing reality in our society. There is a lack of a local reading of the world of children because the widespread diffusion of the mass media and the consequent communication society have made this universe uniformly variegated and more in need of valorisation than continuous analysis. We are witnessing the multiplication of initiatives that various organizations dedicate to young people, but too often they satisfy the need of an adult world that needs to feel proposing, rather than the concrete need to enhance the creative strength of young people. However, I believe that, regardless of the motivation, open spaces, so that children can express +*++initiatives dedicated to them, whether they are of an educational, recreational or cultural nature, today's reality affirms its vitality in its truest expression. I believe that a careful look at the world of children can only lead us to a re-evaluation for what it is today and not in view of a future that will see them as adults and therefore worthy of consideration. Children are not that mass of video addicts, refractory to any reading or cultural stimulus as they have been defined in recent years, but people with expressive canons and their own needs who seek, rather than develop, to channel an adult world into understandable canons, with a completely one-sided interpretation of adaptation. It is therefore a matter of noting the lack of spaces dedicated to children but the need for their restructuring. A restructuring for a protagonist less and less desired by adults and more and more experienced by children. In this way, speaking of the world of children, we will no longer have the impression of referring to an antechamber of reality, but we will have the certainty that without this component no reality can be said to be complete (Poletti, 1983, p. 3).

Rereading this small article that I wrote in 1983 in relation to pastoral and catechetical actions, I think that, except for the modifications and updating of some terms, it is and has always been appropriate to reflect constantly on the relationship between technological reality and educational reality.

We now live immersed in a world pervaded by technologies for an extended period, over forty years, so the reflection on the relationship between technologies, training and learning must be affected by this long "attendance", which seems not yet metabolized starting from the continuous reference to multimedia, interactivity, and the world of information technologies as “new technologies.”

To underline the spirit of this reflection it is interesting to frame the term of new technologies not in a temporal perspective or in the sense of "latest generation" techniques; we must refer, with the focus on new technologies for teaching, to new technological tools but with reference to teaching practices, which contribute to the concrete and effective realization of the educational process.

An approach that has deep roots, already in the fifties with Burrhus Skinner (1954) who publishes the article The science of learning and the art of teaching on the Harvard Educational Review where he highlights and supports from a theoretical point of view the need for the introduction of teaching machines in the learning process, framing it in his theory of reinforcement.

The vision that considers that the school, as well as the informal and non-formal training environments, are part of the social sphere, in which individual needs linked to administrative practices converge, but also to participatory processes, which require the use of technologies and network tools to be lived and participated (Calvani, 2005).

It must be borne in mind that digital media and interactive communication are undoubtedly the most striking phenomena of social change, cultural development, and training processes at the beginning of the new millennium. We must confront ourselves with the new digital culture, that is, the affirmation of a communicative style oriented to interaction, content production and sharing that are the habitat in which we grow today (Ferri, 2011; Ferri & Morigi, 2018).

You may or may not share some cultural and sociological interpretations of these social dynamics and learning styles, but the curiosity of the new generations and the desire to know has certainly grown and has accelerated thanks to new devices and the Internet. We are facing the challenges that have been thrown at us as a society and as individuals since the era we are living in, an era that economist Jeremy Rifkin calls "the era of access". The era of access is ours today, it is a reality, a new panorama in which the concept of property loses meaning. It becomes essential for anyone to have access to the network, so as not to be excluded from the knowledge information society (Rifkin, 2000). We therefore return to underline the importance of acquiring digital skills and taking care of them, developing a critical spirit and a continuous learning style that supports not only learning but promotes inclusion.

Speaking and referring to eidetic structures means going in search of connective structures of robotic systems within the weaving of relationships with the context, then identifying the nodes that make the parts of the same system interdependent in relation to educational instances (Rivoltella, 2022).

In the development of the concepts, Piaget’s constructivism and genetic epistemology are used to highlight how educational robotics methodologies can affect the quality of learning-teaching processes.

The world that declined in the perspective of educational robotics declines and evolves the concept of learning environments in that of ecosystem in which all the actors of the training processes coexist from people to tools to technologies (Damasio, 2003).

Among these robotic technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be identified as a tool and, even before, methodology in learning-teaching processes.

AI and Educational Robotics are both a content and a tool/methodology of cognition and metacognition for the acquisition of specific skills, and transversal skills (Dillenbourg, 2016).

The fundamental knot to which we intend to refer, on the conceptual level, of this educational reflection is a meta dimension that is instantaneous in the “knowledge of knowledge” (Morin, 1989).

Placing ourselves in a new perspective, that of the infosphere, it is evident that we find ourselves in an environment in which the boundaries between an online existence and experience and an offline life are gradually blurred, until they disappear. This new environment makes it necessary to prepare a data analysis that goes beyond quantitative statistics. The analytics referred to is a type that allows effective machine learning to be contextualized and included in training and educational contexts.

This analysis must be placed in a serious and motivated inclusive perspective.

An inclusion that is supported not only by the possibility that these educational methodologies make available but also by the possibility of constantly having a semantic evaluation system of the development of individual learning paths.

In today's intrinsically technological and virtualizing context, it is essential to consider that in this way the information society on the one hand tends to evolve communication methods and on the other hand causes traditional organizational structures to become increasingly participatory.

This reflection leads to a strong correlation between the use of machine learning and deep learning and big data, with a view to educational robotics

Educational robotics in this field of reflection and as an analysis of the information that is extracted from reality is functional to the processes that allow to obtain data and knowledge from the contents and the structure with an analysis of the connections and reconstruction, a data-relationship structure, attributable to a model of knowledge.

When the parameters that have been identified and analyzed must be interpreted, it is possible to perceive ways to go, for example, for the verification of empirical hypotheses on phenomena of interest.

Our era, the contemporary era, is the era of an ever wider interaction, ever more globalized and ever more characterized by local repercussions and reflections on the personal.

Also for the data it is possible to work in the perspective that the study of the facts can lead to the change of one's points of view, using and interpreting the term of reciprocity explicitly recalling the concept of hermeneutical circle.

A model for research: educational robotics and coding

Conclusions

Schools are equipping themselves with technologies and often make a purely instrumental use of them, the importance of these themes in which the thesis is developed is the translation or updating of a motto that I found myself sharing many years ago: "we must move from the computer science class to computer science in the classroom" and today I can say that we are called to "technology in the classroom" not as a simple aid, but, like educational robotics, it allows a new real instantiation of what has been a process of virtualization of knowledge.

We must make sure that educational robotics is a method to understand and enhance cognitive styles in learning-teaching processes.

In this brief reflection, it is important to remember how the network and the context of knowledge, as a relational structure, has also given rise to the concept of collective intelligence that the network has instantiated and highlighted.

Educational robotics is a new modality and a challenge for educational theorises, an area where learning, knowledge, mind, and intelligence compare, interact, and show the network of mutual interconnection and enhancement.

A methodology that helps students through robotics to the analysis and signification of data and to a conscious management of time and resources, considering how learning by mistake can be introduced as a method.

The use of educational robotics puts us in the perspective of a transition from "objects with which to think" to "objects with which to think and get excited", a connection, to an interconnection between computational thinking and emotional intelligence.

An educational robotics that allows a multidisciplinary framework where it is interesting to note how Aristotle combined play with joy and virtue; he writes in the Nicomachean Ethics that "there are activities that deserve to be chosen for themselves, not for anything else, such as happiness" and among them he cites play, and educational robotics has the playful dimension that enhances its effectiveness.

It is important to understand and experience how technologies, both online and physical, can be an effective tool in teaching-learning processes.

Schools are equipping themselves with technologies and often make a purely instrumental use of them, the importance of these themes in which the thesis is developed is the translation or updating of a motto that I found myself sharing many years ago: “we must move from the computer science class to computer science in the classroom” and today I can say that we are called to “technology in the classroom” not as a simple aid, but, like educational robotics, it allows a new real instantiation of what has been a process of virtualization of knowledge.

We must make sure that technology, and educational robotics, is a method to understand and enhance cognitive styles and personalization in learning-teaching processes. As we often find ourselves finding it is difficult to reach conclusions and if it is a question of reflecting on pedagogical processes, cognitive styles and the relationship with the reality that surrounds us in a "playful" and inclusive way, we could refer to Matz's Maxim, written in the book of scientific semi-paradoxes "Murphy's Law" by the writer Arthur Bloch: "The conclusion is where you got tired of thinking."

But this is exactly what we do not intend to do, we started from computational thinking precisely because it allows us to develop tools of abstraction for an understanding and a continuous interaction with reality according to the creative style, way to inclusion.

Technologies also in this context can re-emerge humanity and play as a style of learning and enhancement of people and their abilities; a thought and attention that finds both in robotics and in coding a habitat in which to develop all its potential that educational processes must make their own.

There is the awareness that all the actors of the didactic-educational processes that have at heart the harmonious growth of people, teachers, trainers, and parents, and are brain coaches and feeders of emotions, beyond any theory that is shared.

The formative paths are emotion, ethics, inclusion, dialogue, learning and teaching and without these tensions there can be no meaningful educational relationship; we cannot therefore ignore the value of the technologies that support this relational and educational fabric.

We must not forget that certain attentions and methodologies are intrinsic to take control of and must be cultivated with the tools that evolution and scientific and social progress make available to us.

If, in the common sense, the meaning of the word "game" has a completely different connotation, if not antithetical to the "serious", we remember what Michel De Montaigne, philosopher and writer French of the sixteenth century said: "Children's games are not games, and we must consider them as their most serious actions" and this can probably be said of every age of life.

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