Teacher Training in Educational Robotics - An Experience in Southern Switzerland: The PReSO Project

The PReSO project is a pilot project with 17 teachers of the pre-primary and primary schools in Southern Switzerland. Aim of the project is to introduce children to computational thinking and to foster their interest towards ICT and the STEM disciplines through educational robotics. However, it is challenging to introduce educational robotics into compulsory schools since there is for example a lack of didactic materials and teachers often perceive robotics as something too difficult. To bypass these obstacles and introduce robotics into schools, the research team has developed a teacher-training concept in educational robotics and has trained 17 teachers. The project has achieved good results indicated by the fact that most of the participating teachers have integrated robotics into their annual program. This article describes the training concept and discuss how to train compulsory school teachers in the field of educational robotics.