Green Robots, Sustainable Cities and Inquiring Minds: Young Children Engineer Robots to Create Cities of the Future

Technology is changing the way students learn and is demanding change to the role of teachers. Schools are expected to offer rich digital learning experiences to ensure that classrooms are exciting places of learning. Robotics in schools has been widely acknowledged as enhancing student learning outcomes, particularly motivation, engagement and problem solving. The research literature predominantly makes calls for further research to illuminate issues of sustainability of robotics initiatives beyond the novelty factor, gender differences in sustaining interest, and teacher confidence. And further, robotics has not been overly used in early years classrooms, being more often associated with students in the upper primary and junior secondary years. This paper reports on a two-fold project researching student and teacher learning through embedded robotics curricula. With a focus on sustainable living, Year 1 and Year 7 students explored green cities using programmable robots, with classroom teachers working alongside students and robotics tutors