Fostering Computational Thinking With Arduino and Lego Mindstorms

Abstract

Educational robotics (ER) can be of great assistance to educators who aim to develop their students' computational thinking (CT) skills. The ideas of decomposing a problem, handling it more abstractly, looking for patterns, and creating algorithms for the solution can easily be explained through ER. The ER constructional part could be enhanced by DIY (do it yourself) trend and CoP (communities of practice) interactions while block-based or even text-based programming environments are used to program them. In this chapter, the authors present the most commonly used ER platforms, Arduino and Lego Mindstorms, as well as two projects that illustrate how CT characteristics are elicited by them.