The use of the Thymio robot and socialization processes in the nursery school

The introduction of educational robotics and of coding in the schools has led to the formalization of some innovative methodologies: those are useful both for scientific subjects and for the improvement of the soft skills like problem solving, computational thinking, team working and communication. The main goal of this work is to assess the influence of an educational robotic course on the socialization processes in nursery schools. It was used Thymio, an interesting educational robot, to plan activities for children between the ages of 4 and 6. Both educational activities and assessment tools have been developed during the research. A mixed method strategy was used to gather data through a participant observation and the consequent organization of the information in quantitative variables. Here, we present the results of an exploratory survey on a small group of students that allowed a first check on how educational robotic experiences can have a positive outcome, both on children's cognitive and personal point of view. Experiments on larger scales will be the principal aim of the future research phase.