(529)LEGO ROBOTIC BUILDING KIT AS A MEANS OF INFLUENCING THE STRUCTURE OF COGNITIVE ABILITIES AMONG PRIMARY SCHOOL PUPILS

摘要

The robotic building kits are recently becoming more and more popular in the Czech Republic as atool of education in elementary schools. They are not only used directly in classrooms, but also havetheir place in leisure and free time activities. With the help of these kits the pupils acquire the basics ofalgorithms to solve simple and more complex tasks while learning the basics of programing. At thetime of transitioning to the upper primary school the way of thinking among the pupils changessignificantly. Sometimes this time period is referred to as the formal operations stage. The creativethinking develops and the pupils can understand concepts more easily. Also, at this time, strategicthinking is developing. Our objective was to determine whether robotic kits may have an impact on thedevelopment of abstract thinking among the elementary school pupils. In our research we tested thecognitive skills of pupils that used robotic kits in classrooms actively. We closely focused on a group ofstudents that have never used the kit beforehand. Testing was carried out in cooperation with theteachers on selected schools and with the acquired results it should be possible to verify whether therobotic kits positively affect the abstract thinking of the pupils. This verification is based on the resultsof the testing that was carried out in collaboration with the teachers at selected primary schools.