Exploring a Handwriting Programming Language for Educational Robots

TL;DR

This paper introduces a handwriting-based programming language for educational robots that enables primary school students to program robots by drawing symbols on paper, leveraging smartphones and computer vision to facilitate accessible computer science education.

Contribution

It presents a novel handwriting programming system that integrates with existing classroom practices and uses mobile devices to process instructions for educational robots.

Findings

Participants saw potential for increased accessibility in primary education.

Technical improvements are needed for broader adoption.

Preliminary evaluation shows positive reception among educators.

Abstract

Recently, introducing computer science and educational robots in compulsory education has received increasing attention. However, the use of screens in classrooms is often met with resistance, especially in primary school. To address this issue, this study presents the development of a handwriting-based programming language for educational robots. Aiming to align better with existing classroom practices, it allows students to program a robot by drawing symbols with ordinary pens and paper. Regular smartphones are leveraged to process the hand-drawn instructions using computer vision and machine learning algorithms, and send the commands to the robot for execution. To align with the local computer science curriculum, an appropriate playground and scaffolded learning tasks were designed. The system was evaluated in a preliminary test with eight teachers, developers and educational researchers. While the participants pointed out that some technical aspects could be improved, they also acknowledged the potential of the approach to make computer science education in primary school more accessible.