Week 2- Programmable Toys

Programming is an excellent way to highlight todays contemporary society as it is another learning process. Specifically, programmable toys can help improve a childs critical thinking skills at pre-school age and their numeracy skills through instructing the toy and solving problems along the way which also improves their numeracy vocabulary. ‘learning should be an active and interactive process’ (Janka, 2008) Today was my second week of digital technologies. Our lesson consisted of an introduction to programmable toys. To be specific, we were experimenting with ‘Bee-bot’. This excellent programmable toy is perfect for enhancing early years education. I was very fortunate to have had the chance of interacting with Bee-bot during my time at primary school. This specific programmable toy is a very fun, sufficient way to teach children within any area of the curriculum through playing an educational game. The first recorded programming tool in education dates back to the early 1960’s, it was a programming known as ‘Logo.’ This specific form was used to offer pupils a chance to explore a challenging programming system. On this game, you are provided with a list of instructions. The child directs the arrow to move in a specific direction by inserting commands using the keyboard. It is meant to be a simple task to engage children and make them familiar with creating shapes and sequences. However, when I tried this out myself it was proven to be quite the opposite. Initially, I found it quite challenging to work this programming as the instructions are not the most precise. I can only imagine how hard this must have been for infants!

Programmable toys are an excellent resource to use in the classroom. Some of the benefits include:

  • Very attractive for younger pupils- big buttons and bright colours.
  • They are an excellent way to get children working collaboratively and helping one another.
  • They help children retain vital skills such as counting/ measuring and conveying concepts in words.
  • Hands on approach to learning
  • Cross curricular links (numary/ literacy/ social studies etc.)

Before this lesson I had previously read the article ‘Robots in early education.’ This gave us an insight into how children react to Bee-bot. “We have found our nursery children have improved their problem solving, thinking, numeracy and literacy skills whilst using robots and whilst having FUN!” (Lydon, A) The children seemed to thoroughly enjoy interacting with Bee- bot whilst having an academic impact on them as they were able to practice their numeracy skills.” The programmable toy Bee-Bot4 was awarded as the most impressive hardware for kindergarten and lower primary school children on the world educational technology market BETT 2006” (Banka,2006) There is a lot of positive feedback directed specifically at the use of Bee-bot- it is a great interactive tool for working collaboratively in the classroom for early years. Beebot moves for 15cm and then stops and processes the next step. This wonderful little toy can also turn a full 90 degrees and remembers up to 40 commands!

 

The allocated task we were given was to create an interactive game with ‘Bee-bot’ for pupils pitched at a specific age range suited to your selected experience and outcome. Digital technologies permit children to excel not only within technology but also within other cross curricular activities along the way. We were provided with a week to complete this task and then presented it to our module coordinator. I was overwhelmed with ideas for my Bee-bot mat but some were too easy and others were too complex as I did not have the resources. I fully understand as a student teacher how important every subject is to a childs learning overall. However, I wanted to pick a subject that they will utilise throughout the rest of their lives. I then came together with a couple of my peers to come to a final decision. The best option for us was to decide on our experience and outcome first:

I explore sounds, letters and words, discovering how they work together and I can use what learn I learn to help me as I read and write. (E NG 0-12/ LIT 0-13a/ LIT 0-21a)

 

We then were able to decide on a topic. We decided to embark on my literacy idea-phonics. Phonics is first introduced at early level and is something that will continuously be developed hence why we chose this idea. We created a dual- function Beebot mat with 20 hand-drawn images on either side. One side with the sound “oo” and the opposite side- “sh.” We included words such as ‘Shed’ and ‘wish’.   We created this mat to embed phoneme sounds into a child’s learning as they are crucial for the development of their literacy skills. This activity would be perfect for a group of pupils who have prior knowledge of the specific sounds. I linked this to the experience and outcome from Literacy:

I explore sounds, letters and words, discovering how they work together and I can use what learn I learn to help me as I read and write. (E NG 0-12/ LIT 0-13a/ LIT 0-21a)

To complete our game, we also created a wheel with multiple letters of the alphabet specifically linked to our allocated task. A pupil would spin the wheel and whatever letter it landed on the child would direct Beebot to move to a word beginning with this letter and spell out the word. Then practice a ‘look, cover, write say check’ technique in their jotter. This further test their knowledge on spelling- the teacher can then see where a child is struggling- it is also a good way to reiterate previous learned sounds.

This was the completed “oo” side of our Beebot mat.

 

This was the completed “sh” sound of Beebot mat.

Our spinning wheel:

 

Finally, I must say that I believe me and my peers worked well collaboratively. We all had our own specific allocated task which kept us on track with timing. Reflecting on this experience, next time I would not be as precise with the layout- quantity over quality- I understand the importance of time management as a future teacher and I am keen to improve this. I really look forward to using Beebot specifically when I have my own class as it is an excellent tool to reinforce curricular subjects in a childs learning.

 

 

Janka, P. (2008) Using a Programmable Toy at Preschool Age: Why and How? [Online] available: http://www.terecop.eu/downloads/simbar2008/pekarova.pdf

 

Lydon, A. (2008) Robots in early education. [online] available:http://moodle1819.uws.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/39830/mod_resource/content/1/Reading%20Programmable%20Toys/ICTopus%20-%20Sharing%20Good%20Practice%20-%20Robots%20in%20Early%20Education%20%20.pdf

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