EXPLORING GRAPHING THROUGH PROGRAMMABLE ROBOTS
Hüseyin Bahadır Yanık, Terri L. Kurz, Yasin Memiş · DergiPark (Istanbul University) · 2016
Eight sixth-grade students in a gifted learning centerin an urban city in the central part of Turkey explored graphing usingprogrammable robots. The purpose of this study was to describe how thesestudents engaged in this activity and utilized robots to test their conjecturesthat they developed for the interpretation of given distance/time andposition/time graphs. Data were primarily gathered through classroomobservations, document analysis and interviews. The results showed thatinitially students had difficulties interpreting both distance/time andposition/time graphs and writing appropriate scenarios for the given graphs.Specifically, students initially interpreted those graphs as velocity/timegraphs and wrote scenarios accordingly. Furthermore, students had difficultiesidentifying the velocities for the given intervals on the graphs as well asinterpreting the meaning of slope in relation to physical movement. Programmingrobots and testing their own conjectures with robots provided students withreal-life experiences to make sense of graphing motion in relation todistance/time and position/time graphs. After programming the robots, studentswere able to see the graphical representation of their prediction and checkwhether or not their conjecture was consistent with the actual graph. As well,the students were able to articulate the physical meaning of slope and how itspecifically relates to movement. The results showed increased studentunderstanding regarding the relationship between velocity and distance onposition/time graphs with the use of robots. Furthermore, the data alsosuggested that the students enjoyed using robots for exploring mathematical andscience concepts and considered the use of the robots as beneficial to theirmathematical understanding of distance/time and position/time graphs.