Art and science are inherently intertwined, and this paper explores the intersection of robotics and theater by examining elementary students' attitudes toward robots through their creative writing. Specifically, the research aimed to assess how students perceived robots based on the short stories they composed. A total of 140 elementary school students, aged 9 to 15, were asked to write theater plays in which robots served as the main characters. To inspire their creativity, students were provided with photographs of 30 different educational robots, each featuring distinct shapes and appearances, including humanoid, animal, vehicle, cartoon-like, drone, and abstract machine forms. Alongside the images, brief descriptions of each robot were provided. At the start of the session, a short discussion was conducted to encourage students to develop narratives suited for theatrical performance, incorporating the robots as central characters. The stories were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Quantitative analysis included metrics such as the ratio of robots to human characters. Qualitative analysis focused on identifying recurring topics and scenarios. Prominent situations extracted from the stories included: “The robot has at least one friend”, “The robot is the villain”, or “The robot saves the world.” These scenarios were further categorized based on predominant topic such as friendship, war, or love. Additionally, the study examined the influence of gender and grade level on story topics, robot characterization (whether positive, neutral, or negative), and the occurrence of a happy ending. Results indicated that most students portrayed robots as friendly and positive characters, with friendship and war emerging as the most frequently addressed topics-reflecting the students' social environment and realities. Overall, the findings suggest that young students often perceive robots as social beings, capable of friendship and moral agency, and predominantly assign them positive roles within their stories.

Background: Integrating novel technologies in the classroom has been a longstanding issue in education. Teachers often express reluctance due to negative attitudes. These attitudes may stem from various factors, including a lack of familiarity with the technology, concerns about its impact on traditional teaching methods, and a perceived threat to the teacher's role in the classroom. Motivation: Teachers' attitudes can potentially affect students' exposure to technology and shape their attitudes and perceptions. Also, attitudes toward robots can influence human-robot interaction in the classroom and beyond. Considering the increasing presence of robots in everyday life, it is important to assess the teachers' attitudes toward robots. This study contributes to the existing literature by offering insights into an unexplored population-Croatian teachers. Methods: This pilot study employed a quantitative primary data research design. Data was collected using a Google Forms survey. The survey consisted of demographic and backgroundrelated questions and the Negative Attitudes Toward Robots Scale (NARS). The NARS measures three dimensions of negative attitudes, namely negative attitudes toward situations of interaction with robots, social influence of robots, and emotions in interaction with robots. Results: The sample consisted of 62 teachers, 16 (26%) male and 46 (74%) female. The internal consistency of a Croatian translation of the NARS was acceptable$(\alpha>0,7)$in total and for all three sub-scales. Analysis showed that teachers using robots in teaching had less negative attitudes toward robots, yet the female sample exhibited more negative attitudes than male teachers. Unexpectedly, teachers in this study expressed more positive attitudes toward robots compared to Japanese students in the original study. Conclusion: Given that attitudes toward technology are often shaped by cultural factors, studying them in different contexts and countries contributes to a deeper understanding, leading to more effective adoption. The first contribution of this paper is piloting the translation of the NARS and an examination of its reliability and validity. The second contribution is studying the attitudes and providing insights into Croatian teachers' attitudes towards robots. Examining the attitudes toward robots through the lense of Eurobarometer, NARS, and teachers' characteristics, such as prior experience, gender, and educational context revealed general concerns and highlighted significant implications for the educational context.

In this paper, we describe various STEM outreach activities conducted at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing (UNIZG-FER), as well as the results of a survey conducted among faculty students to determine if and how our activities have contributed to their choice of studies and future careers. For more than 12 years, the UNIZG-FER has systematically organized activities related to the popularization of science and STEM outreach, through a series of events, lectures, workshops, and student visits. Annually, through various activities, we directly engage with several thousand children of various ages, from preschoolers to high school students who are in the process of selecting which college to enroll in. Some of these students have chosen to continue their studies at our faculty, so we ran a questionnaire among freshmen and sophomore students to better understand whether and to what extent our activities influenced their enrollment choices. The results show that the majority of students participated in some of our activities through their pre-university education. Although students generally state that these activities were not crucial in their choice of faculty, they believe that the activities strengthened their decision and intensified their positive attitude towards STEM fields in general.

This work-in-progress innovative practice paper presents a storytelling lesson about robot design aiming to familiarize students with the multidisciplinary nature of robotics as a career. The lesson is based on an integrated STEM approach and structured as a narrative that follows the journey of roboticists in designing a robotic model of a rabbit by using the LEGO® Spike Prime robotic set. Students are immersed in the storyline as characters helping roboticists to test and evaluate their designs. This practical constructivist assignment includes two steps: 1) testing and evaluating assembly instructions and 2) testing and evaluating the two models (visually and by using programming exercises). The two models present distinctive styles of assembly instructions, standard LEGO® building instructions made in Studio 2.0 and 3D building instructions made in BuildIn3D. When it comes to design, the models display different orientations (vertical and horizontal), complexity (number of parts), and mechanics of movement. For this reason, this lesson also serves as a usability and comparative study. Lesson sheets narrate the story and guide the progression while also serving as a testing diary and reflection tool. This approach where students internalize lessons through personal involvement was chosen to facilitate engagement and support problem-solving and knowledge building, scientific inquiry, critical thinking, design thinking, think-pair-share, discovery, and discussion. The lesson was piloted during the teachers' training, after which teachers presented it to their students in elementary schools. Results are based on feedback from 42 students and 11 teachers. Results show that 17% of students included in the study never owned or assembled LEGO®. When it comes to assembly instructions, students considered standard instructions easier to navigate and follow with clearer illustrations and steps. On the other hand, they recognized that 3D instructions provided more detail and expressed that the interactive display from different angles positively affected their building experience. The easier assembly of model 1 was least affected by the clarity of instructions but rather attributed to fewer parts and the simplicity of the model. Although 95% considered model 2 more difficult to assemble, 59% expressed they would prefer to assemble that model over model 1.

Even though the emotional state of a student or the student body in a classroom greatly influences teaching, learning, and motivation, there is a small number of measurements for classroom climate in early education. Significantly, research of human-robot interaction (HRI) would benefit from the information gained from classroom climate analysis. Classroom emotional climate (CEC) comprises the socio-emotional factors of the classroom; student-student interactions and the student's emotional intelligence and mood. In this paper, we propose a novel, cheap and easy-to-implement audience response system device that records students' emotional states in a classroom in an elementary school. The device is developed based on psychological, mechanical, and electronic requirements. The first aim of this study was to investigate the usability of the device in a K-8 classroom for CEC measurement. On the other hand, the second objective was to test students' openness to new educational technologies, and the effect of introducing said technologies on the CEC. The device was tested during two consecutive lectures of foreign language in two fifth-grade English classrooms in primary school. During the lecture, pupils also used educational robots STEMI as an educational tool for one activity. Data collection was done on the devices and using post-questionnaires after both lectures. As a result of the fact that the device was introduced during two different school days, and due to the variability of the participating students and the curriculum for the two days, the analysis was done separately. The analysis was done on data from post-questionnaires and from the device. The questionnaire results and the results from the device show that pupils conform to new educational technologies easily. Activities where students had to write or read, registered the lowest number of presses, since they were concentrating on the assignment. As observed in the questionnaires the activities that were positively evaluated in the questionnaires had the highest number of presses for positive emotions on the device. Similarly the activities that had negative evaluations in the questionnaires had higher number of negative emotion presses than the activities with the positive connotations. Current students in primary schools expect a classroom where interaction is similar to the virtual world they have grown up in, requiring faster information rates and visual learning. Nevertheless, not every type of technology, or the pedagogical aspect of the introduced technology may be suitable to their needs. Teachers that receive feedback about the influence of their lesson plan on the students' emotional states can adjust their instructional and teaching strategies to correspond to the students' states. In other words, the results observed in this pilot study are relevant to educators and researchers as well.

Background: With the advancement of technology and its’ potential as a tool in educational activities, the transformation of the ways teachers organize and teach in modern classrooms was imposed. Yet, learning new technologies and developing pedagogical activities that incorporate such tools could be a challenge for teachers. Because of the different background knowledge of the participants in this study and also their students, the traditional ex-cathedra approach might not be suitable to promote quality progression, facilitate experimentation and interestingness with the platform, and maintain interestObjective: This innovative practice full paper presents a user experience and usability study targeting teachers. The first aim of the study was to investigate the personal experience of teachers and reveal issues associated with the utilization of the platform and materials. On the other hand, the second objective was related to the practical applicability of such in their everyday teaching. Teachers’ feedback and recommendations are important for the improvement of the materials to fit the needs of the classroom and to make use of the full potential a platform offers.Methods: Data collection was conducted during the workshop utilizing an emerging developing microcontroller, VIDI X. VIDI X is a new educational tool that can have ample uses in technology education as a multifunctional microcontroller, a developing board, or as a cluster hub with multiple sensors. The workshop aimed to familiarize teachers with the new learning tool and propose content and pedagogy that could be adapted to the classroom environment. They constituted a basic introduction to electronic components and programming in Arduino IDE. The instructional methodology for the workshop was based on instructional scaffolding. The workbook was organized into lessons with gradually increasing task difficulty. The educators provided instructions when needed to each participant individually. To evaluate the content of the workshop and the microcontroller, a questionnaire was administered immediately after the workshop. The questionnaire comprised: 1) participants’ background information, 2) content of the workshop, and 3) VIDI X. User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) that covers attractiveness, pragmatic, and hedonic quality was utilized to appraise VIDI X.Results: The analysis of the workshop questionnaire showed that the teachers’ liked the workshop and the workbook. Furthermore, the microcontroller and the workbook are suitable for high school students. The analysis of the UEQ showed that the VIDI X was perceived positively on all items, and scales compared to the UEQ benchmark.Conclusion: As today’s students have different prior knowledge in the field of programming, electronics and robotics, the proposed workshop where everyone is progressing at their own pace accompanied with the support of educators, seems to be a good approach to educating in the future.

In this work in progress paper we present an example of innovative practice in organizing informal STEM education workshops with young children. The workshops were divided into two learning scenarios, unplugged programming and hands-on robot play. Unplugged programming encourages understanding of the core concepts of programming such as algorithms and computational thinking rather than focusing on the programming language. In the second learning scenario, pupils were introduced to two educational robots used as a learning tool - Thymio and Codey Rocky. The aim of the second activity was linking the programming concept to a real-world scenario. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using pre- and post- questionnaires. The pre-questionnaires contained questions about the pupils' background knowledge, i.e. basic concepts of programming and robotics. The post-questionnaires were designed to evaluate the workshops impact on the pupils' perception of these observed concepts and their overall satisfaction with the workshops. Combining unplugged activities with robots helps bridging the gap between imagination and reality, therefore improving learning.

For a number of years, various games have been used as an educational tool at different academic levels, especially in primary education. However, only recently games that teach coding and algorithmic thinking or even broader, computational thinking, emerged. Initiatives like Hour of Code and similar online activities or block-based programming games popularized the field, while at the same time, projects like CSUnplugged showed that the “idea of programming” can be learned even without using the computer. In this paper, we present our experience so far in creating and implementing different unplugged activities that teach students of different age levels, from early primary school to the university students, the simple programming concepts and algorithms. As a part of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (STEM-C) outreach program named SUZA - From school to science and the academic community at University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Croatia, we conducted a number of game-like activities based on graph paper programming, block-based programming and using the existing board games. Although this is a work in progress project, the participant reactions so far, collected through interviews and questionnaires, indicated that the conducted activities were well accepted by students and their teachers. We also received a number of useful feedback comments and proposals, such as to expand the activities to include the homework part, or to make them more physical and relocate them outdoors.

Today it is already widely accepted that out of school education exceeds formal education in content and knowledge and that it is not a plus, but a necessity. However, unlike formal education, educators working in informal settings are often volunteers or/and they do those activities on top of their daily jobs. The research questions we pose here are (i) what motivates people to volunteer in K-12 Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (STEM-C) informal education, (ii) what could help to motivate people who are currently demotivated, and finally (iii) what we can do not only to attract new volunteers, but also to retain the current ones. We collected and analyzed opinions of faculty staff, students and volunteers involved in K-12 STEM-C outreach activities conducted at University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Croatia where five years ago, we started our outreach program named SUZA - From school to science and the academic community. The results of our research study show a wide span of reasons why (and why not) people volunteer in our activities, together with their general attitudes toward K-12 STEM-C outreach activities. Although the results are mostly in line with research in the field, there are some specifics which could relate to specifics of volunteering in K-12 STEM-C fields and could benefit wider community.