Introducing Robotics into the Secondary Science Classrooms

Abstract

The Medibotics project was developed to use robotics as a teaching tool to increase student motivation to utilize IT applications to learn scientific and mathematical concepts, and to link them to physics, mathematics, technology, problem solving, and design. This paper will provide an overview of the project, including a description of the intensive professional development program and how it incorporates information technology, engineering design concepts, and related STEM content domains. It also examines the pedagogical strategies that address the needs of their students to achieve the skills and knowledge specified by the state curriculum content standards, and the projects that provide visible and transferable models of the effective use of IT by teachers in classrooms as they support the development of appropriate instructional modules and other materials for use by students, and materials for use by teachers. Evaluation tools will be described.