Roamer Research Matrix

Logo Turtles were the original educational robots. They derived their rationale from Piaget/Papert constructionism. ERA is a set of ten principles that summarises 30 years of practical classroom experience with Turtle/Roamer type robots. While still sympathetic to its constructionist heritage, ERA takes an eclectic and practical view on developmental theories and evidence from other sources that fall under the broad heading “The Science of Learning”. It also takes evidence from other sciences based on an overarching principle on whether they offer validation and explanation of classroom experience with this technology.

ERA is therefore both a framework that summarises the value of Roamer (and similar educational robots) and an hypothesis against which we can build evidence to validate the use of this type of technology. To aid memory the ten principles are grouped under the headings of Teacher, Student and Technology. Each tenet has a basic definition, which will be subjected to refinement as evidence is gathered an collated.

The work in gathering this evidence is part of the longitudinal e-Robot study which clarifies a position regarding what constitutes Scientifically Based Research and is therefore provides an acceptable evidential support or otherwise of ERA.