Outline of the study

Nowadays educational robots have become very popular in both education and therapy for children with different disabilities. There are different educational and therapeutic robots on the market with special features depending on the users they are built for.

Ozobot Evo is a small programmable educational robot (2.5 cm), with sensors, which follows a a route made with a marker on paper. Ozobot Evo can identify the following colours: black, blue, red and green and reacts by lighting up the bulbs the same colour as the line colour. The robot responds to different colour codes, for example, when it reads the combination blue, black, blue, the robot will go faster or when it reads green, black, red, at the first intersection it will turn left. One of the most interesting codes is named Tornado when the robot spins around twice at increasing speed reading the colours combination red, green, red-green, then continues following the line in the same direction.

OzoBlockly is an app built for Ozobot Evo. The programming environment follows the standard block-based approach, with a toolbox on the left side of the screen. OzoBlockly supports five different levels, where in the easiest level the blocks are graphical with icons and just a few numbers instead of text, so programming can start even in the pre-graphics stage. The Ozobot Evo connects to OzoBlockly and runs the special program the child created.

Ozobot Classroom – is a free platform that offers free resources, lessons with worksheets for all users. Users create an account and can access lessons already created or create new lessons.

The advantages of using Ozobot Evo în speech therapy

The Ozobot Evo was used to learn colours. Figure 3 presents the Ozobot Evo reading the red colour after the child with ASD traced this colour. The child is motivated to trace lines using the markers because he sees the immediate effect of his action. If the line is too thin or too thick, the Ozobot Evo will not read that line and the child must retrace that line.

In the 2022-2023 school year Ozobot Evo is used to motivate a student in 5th grade diagnosed with ASD to actively participate in all the classes. If the students gets at least 15 stars in a week in the chart (Table. 1), he can play with the Ozobot Evo for 15 minutes during a speech therapy session. Each teacher will draw a star in this chart if the child demonstrate active participation in the class.

The Ozobot Evo can be used to improve different skills:

– memory skills – memorising colour codes specific to simple commands (e.g. forward, backward, left, right, left right) and marking them on different routes;

– communication skills – creating tracks using OzoBlockly to follow tracks and to describe those tracks or customization of the Ozobot Evo robot – to imitate characters from stories;;

– writing skills –drawing tracks that Evo by Ozobot can follow (letters, numbers);

– sequencing;

– coordination and spatial concepts.

Ozobot Evo is a great educational robot that can be used with success working with students with different disabilities. Ozobot is an educational robot with a simple design that can be used in interactive, hands-on projects or digital individual projects or group projects.

References:

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Talaș D.A. (2022) Dezvoltarea abilităților de comunicare eficientă cu ajutorul robotului Ozobot

Evo în contextul TSA (The development of efficient communication abilities by using OZOBOT EVO robot in ASD context. Octombrie 2022, Vol.VIII, Nr. 2 RRTTLC DOI:10.26744/rrttlc.2022.8.2.02

http://www.rrttlc.ro/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/02_Talas_Dorina.pdf