What is AIBO ? AIBO is produced by SONY Marketed as an entertainment robot Has sensors for input Has LEDs and sound for output as well as motors for movement Can operate autonomously and ‘develop’ from a ‘child’ to ‘adult’ dog Can be controlled by a user wirelessly Can be programmed, using various software tools, to have new behaviours and actions. New behaviours and actions can be passed to AIBO wirelessly for immediate feedback and testing of new code

What is school ? A research project looking at how the use of AIBOs can enhance the teaching of ICT teaching hardware concepts (sensors, motors, digital cameras) teaching networking concepts (wireless, telnet, TCP/IP) promoting discussions on Artificial Intelligence teaching the theory of programming Sponsored by SONY Awarded a ‘Best Practice Research Scholarship’ from the DFES Part of a research project for the University of Warwick Officially starts next academic year

What is important about teaching programming Programming enables students to take on many ‘powerful ideas’ Allows students to develop strategies for solving problems Can we divide into simpler problems ? Is it related to a previously solved problem ?(Polya) The idea that failure is usually a necessary step in developing a solution to a problem. Over 60% of 12 year olds, when recently surveyed at Warwick School, thought they should have some formal programming in teaching.

How we currently teach programming : LOGO Introduced at Year 8 – most students have already seen at junior school Around 4 hours of lessons spent on LOGO Most students progress to teaching the turtle new tricks ( procedures ) Some students get to pass variables into these procedures Very teacher dependent – some prefer a very strict class that inhibits exploration A-Level Students taught Pascal or Delphi using contrived programming examples Students have little desire to explore and enhance programs Students struggle greatly at initial problem solving – rely on teacher Students stop at first failure and have great trouble with debugging

How AIBO might help teach programming : Children can identify with the dog and are able to bring their knowledge about dogs into their programming solutions. ‘identify with the LOGO turtle’ - Papert Varied tools available including : YART - drag and drop events to actions Master Studio - programming through flow chart style logic OPEN-R - a SDK allowing user complete access to AIBO coding in C Instead of completing convoluted / contrived programming exercises the subject now has a physical focus with immediate feedback. AIBO can be updated wirelessly with new actions and behaviours. Learners create their own knowledge and understanding through active engagement with realistic tasks in authentic contexts using actual tools. (Crawford 1999) It’s fun !

The Webots mobile robotics simulation software provides a rapid prototyping environment for modelling, programming and simulating mobile robots. The included robot libraries enable transfer of control programs to many commercially available real mobile robots including AIBO. In collaboration with the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group / LSL / Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Webots will allow students to work on project that interest them and also have a degree of challenge. The challenge of programming a team of robots to play football, we feel, would be a highly motivating stimulus. In collaboration with the Biologically Inspired Robotics Group / LSL / Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

Initial Observations Working with a small group of 12 year old students (year 8) Demonstrated AIBO with an autonomous (AI) personality Demonstrated ‘dance’ AIBO to show movement ability and idea of precise control Demonstrated a Bart Simpson personality developed using YART and students have produced their own AIBO personalities. First successful personalities loaded onto AIBO last Friday and students impressed with seeing their personalities come to life.

Conclusions Enthusiasm to work with AIBO is immense – we will consider ways to measure as part of the research. The ability to upload programs wirelessly gaining immediate feedback seems to capture the imagination of our students. Year 8 students want to know how to program computers but this is lost by A- level. By catching this enthusiasm lower down the school perhaps all students can be taught programming and problem-solving skills. Allowing students the ability to explore and find their own routes is important in teaching ICT. Accepting mistakes as an essential part of the learning process.

Conclusions Over the next two academic years we will hopefully develop methods of integrating AIBO into the ICT curriculum spanning year 7 up to A-level computing. We will look to develop materials to allow the teaching of programming though the use of software and the physical realisation of these programs in AIBO. We will carefully assess the use of these materials.