The 3rd International Workshop “Teaching robotics, teaching with robotics” will be held in Riva del Garda (Trento), Italy, on Friday April 20th, 2012. This workshop follows the spirit of the TERECoP project (www.terecop.eu) and continues the tradition of two previous successful workshops organised in Venice (2008) and in Darmstadt (2010) . It will take place concurrently with the Italian Robocup Junior national tournament and the Discovery on Film exhibition organized by the Town Museum of Rovereto (IT).

The workshop is aimed to promote exchange and sharing of experiences among researchers in the field of educational robotics. Over the last years, at an international level, several efforts have been made to integrate robotics in tertiary and school education, mainly in science and technology subjects.

At tertiary level, whereas robotics is present as a regular subject, essentially in mechanical engineering and information engineering curricula, a problem is still present: how to make large classes of students to access laboratorial activities at affordable costs. For example, robots could be used as reference platforms to apply basic knowledge on computer programming and computer architecture, subjects usually taught at the first semesters of the computer engineering curricula, and therefore followed by most students of the year.

At school education level, robotics has been introduced from kindergarten to high secondary school, either as an interdisciplinary learning activity or focused on school subjects, such as Science, Maths, Informatics and Technology. Following the constructivist/constructionist paradigm, we see robotics technologies not as mere tools, but rather as technologies supporting new ways of thinking in teaching and learning. Educational robotics can actively involve students in authentic problem solving, enhance learners’ research attitudes, and allow learners to carry out their own experiments and investigations. It also helps them to develop their abstract thinking and to acquire teamwork skills, independence, imagination and creativity.

Integration of robotics in school classes is not just a matter of students’ and teachers’ access to robotic technologies. Technology alone cannot affect students’ minds and cannot act directly on learning. Appropriate educational philosophy, curriculum, learning environment, teaching methodologies and well-trained teachers are important factors for the successful integration of robotics innovation in school classes.

Following this framework, the topics of the workshop include:
- Reporting efforts to integrate robotics in school curriculum at all levels of education
- Aims, objectives and content of a curriculum in educational robotics
- Integration of robotics as a new discipline in school curriculum
- Integration of robotics in school science/informatics/technology curricula
- Integration of robotics in other subjects and school curricula
- Evaluation criteria and tools for measuring the impact of robotics on students’ learning
- Constructivism / Constructionism and robotics
- Teacher training in educational robotics
- European and International trends in educational robotics
- Laboratory Experiments for teaching robotics at all education levels
- Hardware and software of new educational Robotic kits
- Methodologies for teaching robotics
- Robotics competitions/contests and their educational impact
- Robotics through Edutainment / Museums / Personal robots and their educational value
- Roboethics - Connections between real robotics and science fiction robotics - Web-based Robotics, Simulation, remote educational robotics - Humanoid Robots and Human-Robot Interaction