Zoltán Istenes and Attila Pásztor
The use of programmable robots in the education of programming

In higher education great emphasis has been laid on teaching IT as well as teaching programming. Students entering into higher education have various background knowledge of computer programming. Some of them studied some basic programming languages at secondary school; some have never studied anything about programming at all.

This is the reason why it is so important to get them know such programming problem-situations besides the basic programming knowledge, syntaxes, basic algorithms that can be solved with the creative usage of the already known algorithms among the favoured environment of a programming language. If these ready-made programs have ’visible’ results (not only the mass of characters on the display) , they can motivate those who have some background knowledge in programming and can help beginners to become experts.   

In order to achieve our goal programmable robots developed by LEGO for educational purposes seem to be one of the most suitable devices.

Some program developing softwares run under graphical operating systems have been made to the device that can make programs and can load them into the memory of the robot where these programs can run independently under the control of the robot’s own operating system. 

We have tried the use of programmable robots in university and college education. In college education our goal is to make students like the subject with the help of this device at the beginning of their studies, while at university getting to the end of the course the goal is to put the already studied programming knowledge (including Artifical Intelligence, communication, image recognition, parallel processing) well into practice.
 
We show some simple tasks (like following routes, looking for a spotlight) as well as more difficult ones (like ’stone – paper – scissors ’ game, scanner, use of the web cam).
   
Applying  this device in teaching not only the motivation of the students can be stronger but  both ’beginners’  and  ’experts’ can acquire a deeper knowledge in programming through solving problems with various difficulties. To present one or two fields its usage or to make some creative algorithms can also be a proper of dissertation and scientific lectures (TDK).

According to our experience programmable robots proved to be very useful devices in teaching programming, and at present we are looking for new fields where these devices can be involved in teaching Information Technology.