In this lecture we would like to present a brief overview of the situation of Hungarian case and share an interesting experiment of using floor-robots in the classrooms.

1. Wandering Robots in Hungarian Primary Schools:
a Case Study
Péter Fehér
Dóra Orsolya Aknai
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

2. What is Educational Robotics? Why is it useful?
1. The use of programmable robot constructs in order to engage groups of students
in playful collaborative problem solving activities.
2. Robots provided to facilitate student’s development of knowledge, skills, and
attitudes.
3. The use of robotics in the teaching and learning process (in
the educational practice) as a subject matter and/or as a cognitive-learning tool to
achieve disciplinary learning objectives.
4. The use of robotics in the teaching and learning process (in
the educational practice) as a subject matter and/or as a cognitive learning tool.
https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/robot-programming-and-tangible-interfaces-for-cognitive-training/47284
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

3. Robotics in Education in Hungary
According to the Digital Education Strategy of Hungary (2016), (a)
programming of robots (at least block-coding) must be taught
between year 5 and year 8 (b) there should be at least one robot per
3 student in every computer lab. However due to strict financial
constraints there is a very few robots are used in schools.
How to solve this problem?
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

4. How does the projects work (today)?
There are several individual and social initiatives in place to improve this situation.
The "Wandering robots" projects, initiated by a Hungarian teacher János Fári in
2017 build on the following procedure: some floor-robots (tts group's Blue-bot)
were sent to selected schools for 2-3 weeks, and they could introduce this tools
into classroom activities this period. After this introduction and use they were
required to send robots to the next school. In our research we examine how the
teachers evaluate of effects and usefulness of this learning method.
Since 2018 – 4 projects are running in parallel:
Bee-bot/Blue-Bot (7 packs – started 2016/2017)
Abacusan ARTEC Vándorrobot (6 packs – started 2017/2018)
Edison robot (4*2 packs)
Micro:bit (1 packs with 10 Micro:bits)
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

5. ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

6. Number of participating schools in 2018-2019
1 robot – 16 schools
2 robots – 16 schools
1 robots – 17 schools
1 robots – 17 schools
3 robot – 27 schools
1 robot – 15 schools
1 robot – 14 schools
Sum: 122 schools in a year, 10 robots
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

7. Introduction of robots applied in projects
Bee-bot and Blue-Bot® are a perfect starting point
for teaching control for primary students, Blue-Bot
can be controlled wirelessly with tablet or PC.
( https://www.tts-international.com/ )
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019
The Artec Blocks Robotist kits are great tools for
STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics) related curriculum, and students will
enjoy being able to creatively build different types of
robots that they can program and control.

8. Introduction of robots applied in projects II.
Edison is a programmable robot designed to be a
complete STEM teaching resource for coding and
robotics education for students from 4 to 16 years of
age. (https://meetedison.com)
Micro:bit is a tiny programmable computer, designed to
make learning and teaching easy and fun! It is an open
source hardware ARM-based embedded system designed
by the BBC for use in computer education in the UK.
(https://microbit.org/ )
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

9. The purpose of the research
The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of
educational robots (floor-robots) in a limited period has an impact on
different classrooms in primary education and attitudes in the context
of elementary education.
We have conducted research with online questionnaries among participants of
original group of Wandering Robots (called Robotcsámborgás in Hungarian). The
survey was carried out with the participation 77 teachers (86,4% female) from
primary schools all around the country (the project has 109 participants) –
according to survey answers. The survey has 13 questions about use of robots,
attitudes of students, type of lessons, pedagogical purposes etc., and 3 questions
with some background information.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

10. Research questions
The main research questions were the following:
• How many teachers/students in schools were involved with this
project?
• What was the most important pedagogical purpose of robot
activities in the classrooms?
• How much and in which lessons could they use the robot
activities, and how could they be integrated into curriculum?
• What type of activities/tools was designed and produced during
work with robots in the classrooms (exercise-books, mats etc.)?
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

11. Results I.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019
3%
54%
29%
14%
Teachers in Wandering Robots project, 2018-
2019
kindergarten teacher
primary school teacher
upper school teacher
SEN teacher 9,10%
92,20%
36,40%
27,30%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
kindergarten primary pupils upper grade (5-8) SEN pupils
Students in project in schools

12. 63,60%
20,80%
9,10%
6,50%
Lengths of "wandering" per school
2 weeks
1 week
3 weeks
other
Results II.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

13. Results III.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019
94,80%
89,60% 89,30%
67,50%
39%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
motivation of students development of algorithmic thinking development of problem solving group working support personal development of
students
Pedagogical purpose of using robots

14. Results IV.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019
59,70%
45,50%
33,80%
18%
3%
22%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Mathematics Reading Environment/Natural
History
ICT History, Society Other topics (personal
development, chess,
music etc.)
Robots in different subjects

15. Results V. Supporting tools – teachers creativity
92,20%
48,10% 48,10%
24,70%
3,90% 5,20%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
new/additional map worksheets personal cards "bottle cap" bee jackets others
Additional tools and helpers, created by teachers
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

16. Result VI.
1,30%
98,70%
5,20%
94,80%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
4 5
Usefulness of "Wandering Robots" project
According to students According to teachers
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

17. Discussion
In summary our results confirm that the motivational effect of using new tools (ie.
robots) for students’ learning is very high.
The Wandering Robots projects provides a starting point a lot of schools to use
(embed) robotics in classrooms and improve curriculum with ICT tools.
After successful first steps they feel inspired to seek new possibilities and financial
support to spread over ER (Educational Robotics) in their own school. The other
feedback refers to improving knowledge sharing between teachers of different
subject and their knowledge about students’ thinking. Results indicated, that
educational robotics can be one of the effective tools for implementation of STEM
topics into curriculum of elementary level.
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

18. References in abstract:
S. Papert, Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York, NY, USA: Basic Books, Inc., 1980.
M. Khine, Robotics in STEM Education: Redesigning the Learning Experience. 2017. 10.1007/978-3-319-57786-9.
J. M. Angel-Fernandez J.M., Markus, V., Towards a Definition of Educational Robotics, In: Philipp Zech, Justus Piater
(Eds.) Proceedings of the Austrian Robotics Workshop, Innsbruck University Press, 2018
Catlin, D. Woollard, J. Educational Robots and Computational Thinking. 4th TRTWR & RIE 2014 - 4th International
Workshop "Teaching Robotics & Teaching with Robotics" & 5th International Conference "Robotics in Education" 2014,
At Padova, Italy
Fehér P. (2017): Problem-solving in Primary Schools with Bee-Bot/Blue-Bot robots. (Problémamegoldás az alsó
tagozaton Bee-Bot/Blue-Bot robotokkal.) DPMK, Budapest. URL: https://dpmk.hu/wp-
content/uploads/2017/08/KP_also_Bee.pdf
D. Alimisis, “Robotics in education & education in robotics: Shifting focus from technology to pedagogy,” in Proceedings
of the 3rd International Conference on Robotics in Education, 2012, pp. 7–14.
P. Ferrarelli, T. Lapucci, L. Iocchi, „Methodology and Results on Teaching Maths Using Mobile Robots”, in In: Ollero A.,
Sanfeliu A., Montano L., Lau N., Cardeira C. (eds) ROBOT 2017: Third Iberian Robotics Conference, pp. 394-406. ROBOT
2017. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 694. Springer Sullivan,
A., Bers, M. (2015). Robotics in the early childhood classroom: learning outcomes from an 8-week robotics curriculum
in pre-kindergarten through second grade, International Journal Technology Des Educ DOI 10.1007/s10798-015-9304-5
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019

19. Thank you for your attention!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask!
ECER 2019 – Hamburg, 2-6 September, 2019