SBIR Phase II: Making and programming robots in early childhood education

SBIR 第二阶段：幼儿教育机器人的制作和编程

• 批准号: 1456530
• 负责人: Mitchell Rosenberg
• 金额: $ 75万
• 依托单位: KinderLab Robotics, Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-04-01 至 2018-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1456530&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; II; Making; programming

This SBIR Phase II project focuses on robot systems designed for early childhood education (preK-2). There is increasing research and applications for educational robotics, but little attention are focused on the foundational years. The early childhood segment is underserved because there are few available platforms for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education that are developmentally appropriate for children 4-7 years old. However, research shows that from an economic and a developmental standpoint, educational programs that begin in early childhood result in lower costs and more durable effects than those that begin later on. This project focuses on developmentally appropriate robot kits for young children, and the curriculum support, teacher resources and automated assessment tools to make this innovation useful for early childhood education in a broadly disseminated, sustainable and scalable way. Recent re-envisioning of early childhood programs by the Federal government has resulted in calls to develop innovative technologies and approaches for teaching STEM. Given the size of the industry devoted to early childhood education, the potential commercial impact is significant, opening new markets and job opportunities. This innovation also has the potential to have significant positive impact on the US economy by preparing children with economically important skills.The innovation underlying this project is the design of a robot system that engages 4 to 7 year old children in learning programming concepts through the use of a developmentally appropriate programming language. In order to be developmentally appropriate for this age range, the programming language is physical, not typed, with no screens or keyboards of any kind required. The resulting educational platform also enables children to develop engineering design process skills by building physical objects that can respond to different inputs through the use of sensors. This project is organized around five technical objectives: a developmentally appropriate robot kit for young children to learn programming and engineering; robot modules for curriculum integration with other areas such as math, science, literacy and the arts; support systems for early childhood teachers through a web portal with resources for both formal and informal education and professional development strategies; and an automated learning assessment system that collects data characterizing student learning directly from the robot, analyzes it through innovative mechanisms and displays it using visualization tools according to the different needs of parents, educators and school leadership to understand learning outcomes; and cost reduction of the robot system for broadening adoption.

该 SBIR 第二阶段项目重点关注为幼儿教育 (preK-2) 设计的机器人系统。教育机器人技术的研究和应用越来越多，但很少有人关注基础阶段。幼儿教育领域服务不足，因为适合 4-7 岁儿童发展的 STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）教育平台很少。然而，研究表明，从经济和发展的角度来看，从幼儿期开始的教育计划比后来开始的教育计划成本更低，效果更持久。该项目重点关注适合幼儿发展的机器人套件，以及课程支持、教师资源和自动评估工具，以使这一创新以广泛传播、可持续和可扩展的方式有益于幼儿教育。联邦政府最近对幼儿计划的重新构想引发了开发 STEM 教学创新技术和方法的呼吁。鉴于幼儿教育行业的规模，潜在的商业影响是巨大的，可以开辟新的市场和就业机会。 这项创新还有可能通过培养儿童掌握重要的经济技能而对美国经济产生重大积极影响。该项目的创新是设计一个机器人系统，让 4 至 7 岁的儿童通过使用适合发展的编程语言来学习编程概念。为了适应这个年龄段的发展，编程语言是物理的，而不是打字的，不需要任何类型的屏幕或键盘。由此产生的教育平台还使孩子们能够通过构建可以通过使用传感器响应不同输入的物理对象来发展工程设计过程技能。该项目围绕五个技术目标进行组织：为幼儿提供适合发育的机器人套件，以学习编程和工程；用于与数学、科学、读写和艺术等其他领域集成课程的机器人模块；通过门户网站为幼儿教师提供支持系统，其中包含正规和非正规教育以及专业发展战略的资源；自动化学习评估系统，直接从机器人收集学生学习特征的数据，通过创新机制进行分析，并根据家长、教育工作者和学校领导的不同需求，使用可视化工具进行展示，以了解学习成果；降低机器人系统的成本以扩大采用范围。