Keyword: «development of technical competences»

. The Federal Law “About Education in the Russian Federation”, regulating social relations in the field of education, establishes the principles and directions of additional education for schoolchildren. Additional education should ensure the adaptation of children to life in modern society, predetermine their choice of profession. The breakthrough of science, we witness in the 21st century, requires fundamentally new skills from society, the skills to master the emerging technologies efficiently, to understand their working principle. The present generation of schoolchildren should be ready for life in a society with needs for technical progress, possess the necessary level of technical culture. The key components of technical culture are technical knowledge and technical competence. Achieving a high level of technical culture of schoolchildren requires a holistic approach to the process of its development. The models for building up students' key competences provided by the school’s educational program do not adequately shape the technical culture of schoolchildren. Students are surrounded by a wide variety of technical devices in everyday life, but not all of them understand how to use them, and some of them do not know the principle of their work. The discipline of robotics that has appeared in the educational environment allows students to learn more about the principles of operation of such devices, and sometimes to construct these devices themselves, which develops the technical competence of schoolchildren and helps acquire technical knowledge. The possibility of developing the technical culture of schoolchildren with the help of educational robotics and the need to work out educational methods in this area determine the relevance of the study. The article describes the criteria for evaluating indicators and the levels of technical culture, acquired interdisciplinary knowledge of students as a part of the work of additional educational programs in robotics, the results of the implementation and testing of the educational methodology. The materials of the article will help to supplement the existing methods of teaching robotics, and help stimulate teachers to project work with students. It may be considered as educational material in the development of additional devices for robotic sets.