Phogo: a low cost, engaging and modern proposal to learn how to program

Basic computational thinking, so necessary in today's society, can be learned in an engaging way with the use of educational robots. In order to reach very diverse groups of people, educational robots need to be simple, scalable and low cost. Inspired by the success of the LOGO project, we have developed the Phogo pedagogical platform, built around a low cost robot (less than $80) capable of tracing its path with a marker pen. We also present a high-level Python-based control library that allows for transparent and easy wireless communication with the robots. The approach was tested in an informal workshop with a group of teenagers without any previous self-conscious computational knowledge. As the students were attracted by the robot and the simple approach, they were able to gain some insight about abstract programming concepts such as variables, functions, and flow control structures. The majority of the students were people with physical, cognitive or intellectual disabilities and they were able to follow, enjoy and learn as any other student making this an accessible activity to everyone. Finally, we summarize our efforts documenting and publishing the Phogo system as open-source in order to promote its use in future workshops.