Programmable educational toy robot design and its use in preschool

The aim of this study is to examine the contribution of the use of programmable educational toy robot in preschool period to the students' computing thinking skills, to investigate what should be considered by examining the process of designing and developing educational robots suitable for preschool age groups and to shed light on subsequent studies by taking the opinions of teachers who practice. For this purpose, this study was designed as a design and development study. In the study, a programmable robot was developed in accordance with ADDIE model and opinions of teachers about this robot were obtained. In the study, teachers using the developed robot in their classrooms were selected using the purposeful sampling method. The study group consists of a total of 37 preschool teachers working in 13 different schools in the central district of Afyonkarahisar province. With the semi-structured interview form, it was tried to determine the general opinions of the teachers about the application, the reactions of the study and the effects of the students on the students, their views on the use of the study, their views on the negative situations. System Usability Scale was used to evaluate the usability of the developed product. According to the study results, ADDIE model was found to be applicable in the development of the programmable robot. The data obtained from teachers showed that the programmable robot contributes to the learning process by helping to collaborate, learn with fun, learn by living and embody. On the other hand, it has been determined that using this robot in the classroom causes some questions such as time management. It is concluded that the programmable robot has a high level of usability and teachers have some suggestions for development.