RoboScape Online is a robotics simulation platform designed to reduce the barriers to entry for teachers to use robots as an educational tool in their classrooms. With simulated robots in a shared virtual 3D environment, students can be provided with "hardware" at no cost, no maintenance required, and free for them to "take home" while simultaneously collaborating with peers anywhere in the world. The environment supports remote, hybrid and in- person learning equally well. Programming support is provided through NetsBlox, a block-based programming environment, creating a novice-friendly experience while providing strong distributed computing and collaboration tools. Existing curricula focused on computational thinking and cybersecurity in NetsBlox have been used with physical robots for several years. These activities have been recreated with virtual robots, and the exact same code works in the simulated environment as well. However, virtual robots and their environments aren't limited to only the same experiences as before. New robots can be designed equipped with sensors and actuators previously infeasible for classroom use, giving students more interesting "missions" to work on solutions to. The software is open source, with free servers available, and tools are also provided to create new scenarios and environments. Handouts explaining the basics of the RoboScape environment will be provided. A computer with a web browser is required to use the software.

Distributed computing, computer networking, and the Internet of Things are all around us, yet only computer science and engineering majors learn the technologies that enable our modern lives. This paper introduces PhoneIoT, a mobile app that makes it possible to teach some of the basic concepts of distributed computation and networked sensing to novices. PhoneIoT turns mobile phones and tablets into IoT devices and makes it possible to create highly engaging projects through NetsBlox, an open-source block-based programming environment focused on teaching distributed computing at the high school level. PhoneIoT lets NetsBlox programs-running in the browser on the student's computer—access available sensors. Since phones have touchscreens, PhoneIoT also allows building a GUI remotely from NetsBlox, which can be set to trigger custom code written by the student via NetsBlox's message system. The approach enables students to create quite advanced distributed projects, such as turning their phone into a game controller or tracking their exercise on top of an interactive Google Maps background with just a few blocks of code.

Distributed computing, computer networking, cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things (IoT) are all around us, yet very little of the underlying concepts are being taught in introductory computer science courses in K12. Teaching IoT is especially problematic since it requires hardware with its own cost and maintenance requirements that many under-resourced schools cannot afford. However, smartphones are commonplace networked devices that boast a wide range of sensors. With the right approach, they can be used to introduce many advanced computing concepts even to novices. We have created a mobile app, PhoneIoT, which makes all available sensors accessible to the user's computer through NetsBlox, a block-based educational programming environment specializing in networking and distributed computing. Accessing PhoneIoT uses the same simple networking primitives as other NetsBlox services, so no additional knowledge is required. PhoneIoT makes it possible to collect sensor data, build a custom graphical interface on the device and receive corresponding events, all without leaving your browser running NetsBlox. This demonstration will showcase a few simple projects such as an exercise tracking app and how to turn your phone into a game controller.

While educational robotics and makerspaces are useful to modern STEM education, they introduce both physical and economic barriers to entry. By creating a simulated, networked environment, we can facilitate instruction on cyber-physical systems and related topics while reducing cost and complexity. The virtual environment created is connected to a block-based programming language, NetsBlox, to allow students to engage with the curriculum regardless of programming experience. The networked simulation and collaborative programming environment combine to become especially effective for distance learning. This demonstration showcases example scenarios providing students with a simple interface to interact with a simplified sensor network in a small area of a smart city and solve robot challenges.

Many block-based programming environments have proven to be effective at engaging novices in learning programming. However, most restrict access to the outside world, limiting learners to commands and computing resources built in to the environment. Some allow learners to drag and drop files, connect to sensors and robots locally or issue HTTP requests. But in a world where most of the applications in our daily lives are distributed (i.e., their functionality depends on communicating with other programs or accessing resources and data on the internet), the lack of support for beginners to envision and create such distributed programs is a lost opportunity. This paper argues that it is not only feasible, but crucial, to create environments with simple yet powerful abstractions that open up distributed computing and other widely used but advanced computing concepts including networking, the Internet of Things, and cybersecurity to novices. By thus removing the walls around our environments, we can expand opportunities for learning considerably: programs can access a wealth of online data and web services, and communicate with other projects. Moreover, these changes can enable young learners to collaborate with each other during program construction whether they share their physical location or study remotely. Importantly, providing access to the wider world will also help counter widespread student perceptions that block-based environments are mere toys, and show that they are capable of creating compelling applications. The paper presents NetsBlox, a programming environment that supports these ideas and shows that tools can be designed to democratize access to powerful ideas in computing.

Distance education has gained significance recently. However, its application to robotics education presents challenges as physical access to hardware is typically required. While educational robotics simulation platforms exist, most are limited in scope or do not facilitate remote collaboration well. This paper proposes a novel networked robotics simulator for education, where students are able to collaborate in a shared 3D virtual space their robots inhabit. The framework combines these simulated worlds with a block-based programming environment to enable distance robotics education for a wider audience. The users' programs run in a web browser on their computers and they issue commands to the virtual robots through a network protocol abstracted to simple-to-use blocks. Robots send back acknowledgements and sensor values through the same protocol. Interactive environments provide students with a more immersive educational experience, and allow for automatically evaluating student performance. In addition to sharing the virtual worlds remotely, students can also develop their programs together since the block-based environment supports both synchronous and asynchronous remote collaboration. The paper presents two scenarios showing a robotics challenge and an extension of the concept to a smart city scenario controlling traffic lights. Reduced barriers to entry for both robotics education and curriculum creation will allow for a more diverse set of students and course materials.

This paper presents a study using a robotics platform for teaching computing and cybersecurity concepts to high school students. 38 students attended a week-long camp, starting with projects such as a simulation-only game and a simple autonomous driving program for the robots in order to learn and apply computational thinking (CT) and networking skills. They were then assigned a series of challenges that required developing progressively more advanced cybersecurity measures to protect their robots. This culminated in a final challenge that required implementing defensive measures such as encryption, secure key exchange and sequence numbers. We used an evidence-centered design framework to construct rubrics for grading student work. The pre- and post-test results show that the interventions helped students learn cybersecurity and CT concepts, but they had difficulties with networking concepts. These results correlate with scores from the game and the final challenge. Overall, surveys show that the competition-based robotics learning framework engaged students and supported their overall learning, but our intervention needs to be modified to help students learn networking concepts

NetsBlox (https://netsblox.org) is a web-based collaborative learning environment extending Snap! with a few carefully selected abstractions that enable students to create distributed applications. These include online multi-player games and client-server applications that access online STEAM data such as maps, weather, earthquakes, movie information, etc. The distributed computing abstractions supported by NetsBlox also make it possible to write robot control programs. These programs issue wireless commands to the robots which in turn reply with acknowledgements and sensor readings. The programs run in the browser making debugging much easier and eliminating the need to download anything to the robots. Furthermore, the environment makes it possible for other users to eavesdrop on the wireless messages and hijack the robots of others. This provides an excellent motivation for cybersecurity and makes it easy to teach it in a hands-on manner. We have created a cybersecurity curriculum for a week-long summer camp for high school students. Lessons include Denial of Service attacks, their detection and mitigation, cryptography, secure key exchange, replay attacks, etc. Each day student teams solve challenge problems that their robots have to carry out while under cyber-attack by the other participants. This technology demonstration is a companion to the paper "Teaching Cybersecurity with Networked Robots." It will provide the audience with a more practical view of this novel approach to hands-on cybersecurity education.