Evaluation of Beebots
Strengths:
- Using Beebots allowed children to participate in active learning, which helped enhance their understanding of position, direction and movement.
- They helped contextualise learning for children, who otherwise found it very difficult to distinguish between left and right.
- Children successfully followed instructions and it made describing a journey easier for most of them. Use of the Beebots helped increase children’s confidence in a fun and active way.
- Children worked well both independently and co-operatively in helping one another describe a journey. They took more ownership and responsibility in their learning.
- We found Beebot to be a good small group activity.
Areas that could be improved to make better use of Beebots:
- We did not have all the appropriate materials/resources to carry out tasks i.e. Beebot mats. Therefore, all resources had to be made, which was quite time consuming and an extra work load for us. As well as this, the resources made were not suitable for all tasks, where Beebot could otherwise have been used.
- I feel that in order to make the best use out of Beebots, more support is needed in the class to help train all children to use this technology more independently and successfully. I found that using Beebots when the classroom assistant was present was much more effective- better working in smaller groups.
S. Bhopal
October 2010
Have a look at Primary 3 using the Beebots
