Innovative concepts in educational robotics: Robotics projects for kindergartens in Austria

Using robotics platforms for kindergarten children to interest them for computer science is a rather new idea in educational robotics. In this paper we present two different robotics projects in kindergartens. The Department of Computer Science at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien established a course setting for children aged four to six years. Within the project they compared the performance of those kindergarten kids who received the robotics workshop with those who did not attend the training in order to analyze the effects of the course on the children’s cognitive processes. The second project, initialized by the Graz University of Technology and the University of Teacher Education Styria, focuses the cross-generational aspect involving kindergarten kids, pupils as well as senior citizens. Within the project a robotics day in a kindergarten offering eleven different hands-on experiments for children was organized and a first qualitative feedback was obtained.