Jan Preclík attended the course Design Learning Scenarios for Educational Robotics in Lisbon, Portugal on September 7-11, 2015. The six participants of the course, divided into two groups, started to deal with the first task – to think of a continuation of a fairy-tale about cats and dogs and subsequently design and program robots, which will act like the characters of the story. Alongside with his partners, he decided to create a robot-dog watching a house and „a cat“ trying to hide away from the dog. Jan appreciated the creativity and interactive communication that the task required. In the following days, the team worked on a scenario, in which a fire engine is to find a burning house in the city.
In Portugal, robotics represents a connecting element between different subjects. In such an approach, learners are, for instance, taught about the job of firefighters; afterwards they build a model of the city in their art class; the teachers of chemistry and physics familiarise them with the process of burning and in their maths lessons they learn how to represent a map of the city (graph…), meanwhile, they learn about first aid and many other related things. Jan appreciated such a complex approach to learning and use of robotics.