Robotics in STEAM Education

The speed of change in our society has been accelerating since the birth of the Internet. New technological tools are being introduced into our daily life more rapidly than ever before. Among a lot of various technological advancements, the speed of the changes that robotics technology has created has been drastically increasing in recent years. Despite all the drastic changes taking place in the world, public education has maintained almost the same system since its establishment in the middle of the nineteenth century. Although the requirements for an effective workforce have changed at the same speed as technological advancements, the majority of schools are continuing what was done in the past with little hope that they can adequately prepare students for the future. Some even state that if we could have teachers from the nineteenth-century time travel to our schools, they would have no problem teaching our students. Because current public education places a heavy emphasis on memorization, our schools and curriculum are astonishingly similar to those in the nineteenth century. When designing, constructing, programming, and documenting the development of autonomous robots or robotics projects, students not only learn how technology works, but they also apply the skills and content knowledge learned in school in a meaningful and exciting way. Educational robotics is rich with opportunities to integrate not only STEM but also many other disciplines, including literacy, social studies, dance, music, and art, while giving students the opportunity to find ways to work together to foster collaboration skills, express themselves using the technological tool, problem-solve, and think critically and innovatively. Educational robotics is a learning tool that enhances students’ learning experience through hands-on mindon learning. Most of all, educational robotics provides a fun and exciting learning environment because of its hands-on nature and the integration of technology. This course aims to promote robotics in classroom by connecting robotics learning with STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math), an educational framework that brings reality into the classroom by connecting different subjects together in a way that they will relate to both the real and business world and to each other.

The main purposeof the course is to help teachers improve their knowledge in Robotics and STEAM education in their classroom.

• Involve teachers in learning activities related to technology, engineering, math, art and science (STEAM).
• Provide the theoretical background of STEAM.
• Experience the STEAM content through hands-on activities, but also gain self-efficacy and a new view of their own capabilities as STEAM teachers. 
• Gain access to the benefits of project-based learning through robotics.
• Discover the usefulness of Arduino in STEAM education.
• Provide basic trainingon topics such as controls,automatisms, robots and programmable machines. 
• Get familiar with currentuse of roboticsand coding in nowadayseducation trends.