Videos, Educational Robotics and Puppets: An Experimental Integration of Languages

This paper aims to present the results of an experimental activity in Media Education and Educational Robotics, based on the integration of the audiovisual language (video), the Robotics language (LOGO) and the ancient theatrical language of marionettes (puppets of the Italian Dynasty of the Lupi Family). This case study is part of a wide research about the role of the multimedia language and innovation in Education, Pedagogy and Anthropology of Media. Our research group works following two experimental directions: first, we consider Media Education as a method to teach the grammar and syntax of the multimedia language, to help students not only to read with media but also to write (they can participate in the collective creation of materials for the increase of the cognitive surplus). Of course, we want to educate them to communicate and produce meanings. They should acquire technological skills and digital competences, and overcome some learning difficulties. Secondly, we use educational robotics to increase some basic notions about the visual and spatial skills (above all, in primary schools) and to help students acquire some processes of reasoning, such as the logic of problem solving and creative problem solving. At the same time, we want to help students develop a comparative awareness between the ancient and traditional language of the theatrical puppets and the modern video language and the robot language. Starting from these aspects and from previous technological and media laboratories (with primary and secondary school students), we experiment with an innovative methodological approach to realize storytelling videos with robots and puppets. In this activity, students create some short films, starting from their imagination and working on the storytelling process; robots (Bee-bot and Pro-bot) and marionettes are the protagonists of these videos. Students must ideate the tale (which is about a comparison between the traditional age and the postmodern-technological age), build the scenography, programme the robots and realize the video, thinking about how robots can move and interact with others and with space, according to the script. In this way, students must consider the skills to realize a communicative video and, at the same time, the code requirements to move a robot as well as how it is possible to create a meaningful product with these technologies. In this paper, we describe this experiment, its educative aims and its results (obtained during the 3rd edition of the Summer Junior University, 2016, Turin, Italy). R. Grimaldi and S. Palmieri wrote 1 and 4 paragraphs; L. Denicolai wrote 2 and 3.