TEACHING HISTORY WITH THE AID OF EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS

S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) describes a curriculum that combines science, technology, engineering, and math with theoretical knowledge through real-life practice. This paper focuses on promoting educational robotics in primary and secondary education due to its pedagogical benefits. The activity designed here was invented to teach history to students in primary and secondary schools. The paper aims to engage students in creating historical timelines based on their school curricula, and the robots they are to construct with the aid of their teachers use the same timelines as guides. The robot is then programmed to follow a black line (i.e. a timeline) until it finds a marker with a historical date based on its distance sensor. The robot then stops moving and the robot plays the historical narration recorded by the pupils. With this exercise, students can be divided into groups. They can build robots with materials, motors, and sensors with the Lego Education Spike Prime pedagogical package. They can record all the historical facts about a certain period. The period we used as a case study is the „Great Revolution“ (1821–1830) presented in Appendix C of their sixth-grade textbook. The Spike Prime software was selected for these purposes. The impressions of the students and teachers who participated in the project are very positive. It was a fun and easy way for the students to learn about the topics presented in their textbook. They could also gain a better understanding of the historical facts that they had recorded. Other positive features of this assignment include the ease of adapting the timelines to different primary and secondary school lessons.