Cultural Heritage Through Educational Robots: Using a Ukrainian Folk Tale with a Programmable Robot in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Programmable robots are increasingly used to introduce computational thinking and programming to young children. However, how to practically introduce this is still being developed, where storytelling and project-based methods have been promoted as possible ways to achieve this. This paper presents a study from a preschool featuring 4–5 year-olds working with a Ukrainian folk tale, The Mitten, while introducing programming through a programmable floor robot, The Blue-Bot. The paper presents the iterative cycles during a design-based study of merging the folk tale with the Blue-Bot during the project. The paper further examines the educational affordances of a programming board created during the project, showing how the folk tale provided a fitting structure for the board and pedagogical scaffold during the activities. The paper discusses how older forms of cultural heritage can be merged with new technologies and the added importance of the particular case of Ukrainian cultural heritage following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.