The reality of educational robots in digital skills and technology curricula in public education in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The research aimed to identify the reality of educational robots in the curricula of digital skills and technology in general education in the KSA. A questionnaire was applied to a sample of (155) teachers and supervisors (boys-girls). The grade is "high", and that the most prominent benefits gained by students are developing the ability to self-learning, communication, increasing students' motivation, developing different types of thinking, the ability to solve problems, developing a spirit of cooperation and facilitating learning programming and the Internet of Things. The average of the challenges facing teaching educational robots was (4.25), with a high degree, and the most prominent of these challenges are: the lack of availability of modern computer laboratories, and the lack of availability of educational robots bags in schools. The scarcity of internet availability in classrooms and computer labs, the lack of training programs provided to teachers on the practical side, and the difficulty of implementing the practical side of educational robots, and a statistically significant difference was found about the difficulties of teaching educational robots due to the gender variable in favor of females. The research recommended expanding the teaching of educational robots, and taking the approach of integration between skills curricula, digital technology, and other curricula according to the (STEAM) approach, as it achieves the functionality of knowledge in practical life. A proposal to study the effectiveness of teaching educational robots on some variables such as the development of object-oriented programming and the Internet of Things among secondary school students.