EDUCATIONAL ROBOTICS AS A MEANS OF DEVELOPING PUPILS’ AND STUDENTS’ COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

The accelerating development of technology over the past decades has brought many radical changes in all aspects of life and has unquestionably affected the functioning of our society. The expansion of the digital space and the technological innovation in industry, commerce and household have given rise to a large number of new concepts relating to digital and information technology and their use. In the context of supporting these activities and needs, the FEP document has been updated for the educational area Information and Communication Technology in elementary schools but also in general and technical secondary schools. This innovation is built primarily on the development of computational thinking, which is based on two pillars—algorithmization/programming and educational robotics. The present paper uses educational research to analyse the area of educational robotics as one of the important tools for promoting the concept of developing computational thinking including a description of the specific tools for the implementation of this type of teaching. The aim of the research study was to analyse the current level of pupils’ awareness of and practical experience with educational robotics, both in school and in extracurricular activities. The research tool for data collection was an online questionnaire designed by the authors.