This paper presents a study about learning and the problem solving process identified among junior high school pupils participating in robotics projects in the Lego Mindstorm environment. The research was guided by the following questions: (1) How do pupils come up with inventive solutions to problems in the context of robotics activities?(2) What type of knowledge pupils address in working on robotics projects? and (3) How do pupils regard or exploit informal instruction of concepts in science, technology and problem solving within a project-based program? Data collection was made through observations in the class, interviews with the pupils, observations of the artifacts the pupils had constructed, and analyses of their reflections on each project. The study revealed that the pupils had often come up with inventive solutions to problems they tackled by intuitively using diverse kinds of heuristic searches. However, they encountered difficulties in reflecting on the problem solving process they had used. In robotics projects, the pupils deal primarily with qualitative knowledge, namely, the ability to identify specific phenomena in a system or factors that affect system performance. The study also showed that pupils are likely to benefit from implementing informal instruction on concepts in science, technology and problem solving into a project-based program. This type of instruction should take place in the context of pupils' work on their projects, and adopt a qualitative approach rather than try to communicate in the class procedural knowledge learned by rote.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the teachers’ practice of “meaningful learning” has become an inseparable part of the educational discourse. As a result, many schools have adopted the project-based learning (PBL) approach, which represents different teaching methods. The PBL approach also changes the position of the teacher as a source of knowledge as well as teacher–student relationship. The integration of PBL into and its implementation in the teaching of the robotics profession in junior high schools have created a new reality in which teachers who use project-based learning for teaching robotics come from diverse professional backgrounds, and in many cases, they are selected by the principal of the school. In light of this reality, it is interesting to examine the experience of teachers who manage a project in a field of knowledge that is not their expertise. This study examined teachers’ perceptions of their experience in teaching using the PBL approach. The subject of robotics was chosen as the field of research, as it represents a much broader issue concerning the implications of teaching using PBL on the professional, personal and ecological aspects. The study data were collected using structured questionnaires, which also included open-ended questions. These questionnaires were answered by 173 teachers, some of whom are educators (class tutors) and some professional teachers from three fields of knowledge: human studies, sciences and engineering. Each questionnaire included attitudes relating to the PBL teaching experience and the contribution of the PBL approach to both teachers and students. The findings show a high level of general satisfaction among the teachers and a sense of self-efficacy in teaching PBL. The findings also indicate personal, professional and ecological (teacher–environment relationship) contributions that were perceived as significant. The findings additionally indicate that class tutors perceived ecological contribution more than professional teachers, and professional teachers in the fields of human studies and sciences perceived it to be more significant than engineering teachers. Design/methodology/approach This study was based on quantitative research principles from the assumption that it can also be applied to different populations. The premise of this study is that the best way to understand phenomena is by using a large sample and numerical measurement (N = 176), which is required to avoid a result that may reflect only a partial view of the matter at hand when focusing on only a few limited cases. Research limitations/implications A limitation of the present study is expressed in the fact that it is based on the perspective of one of the participants in the learning–teaching process – the teachers – who guided the project. The students’ perspective has not been studied. It is required to continue the study and examine the perceptions of the students who participate in PBL classes in which the teachers are not experts in the field of knowledge.

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Smart cities and traffic applications can be modelled by dynamic graphs for which vertices or edges can be added, removed or change their properties. In the smart city or traffic monitoring problem, we wish to detect if a city dynamic graph maintains a certain local or global property. Monitoring city large dynamic graphs, is even more complicated. To treat the monitoring problem efficiently we divide a large city graph into sub-graphs. In the distributed monitoring problem we would like to define some local conditions for which the global city graph G maintains a certain property. Furthermore, we would like to detect if a local city change in a sub-graph affect a global graph property. Here we show that turning the graph into a non-trivial one by handling directed graphs, weighted graphs, graphs with nodes that contain different attributes or combinations of these aspects, can be integrated in known urban environment applications. These implementations are demonstrated here in two types of network applications: traffic network application and on-line social network smart city applications. We exemplify these two problems, show their experimental results and characterize efficient monitoring algorithms that can handle them.

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