MULTIMEDIA SCIENCE Educational Technology

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Can you imagine a classroom where a robot or robots roam the classroom helping students with their math, their English, or their handwriting?  Well, as you know, robots have invaded a number of other industries, such as automobile manufacturing. They have brought tremendous increases in productivity but also losses in jobs.

Robots have started to be used inside of classrooms around the world.  So what are the reasons robots might be used in the classroom.

•  The upcoming generation seems to be in love with technology.
• Shy students might be more willing to interact and participate with a robot.
• Robots don’t get tired and have unlimited patience.

Swiss researchers have built a humanoid like robot which teaches young students about 7 years old handwriting.  The learning is accomplished by having the students teach the robot to write and as the robot improves, the students do as well.

Robots might be an answer to the challenge of educating autistic children, who are uncomfortable in the presence of human teachers.  A school in England has found that autistic students enjoy working with teaching robots.

Of course, creating an effective teaching robot is not an easy task.  It seems that artificial intelligence is always just around the corner.  But they are trying in South Korea, where a robot uses AI software including motion tracking and speech recognition to teach English.  There is an initiative there to place a robot in every kindergarten program.

In the US, a robot teaches foreign languages to preschoolers.

It was found that young girls did not find robots with visible gears, wheels, and wires that interesting.  But when made with rounded curves and more creative shapes, the girls thought differently.

But robots, so far, are used mostly for teaching very simple and repetitive material, such as vocabulary. For the time being, educators’ jobs should be safe.  But the clock is ticking and the teacher terminator may be on the horizon.

Would you like to guess when this is going to happen?  Or will computer based and Internet based learning put both teachers and the robots out of business?

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The premise behind Lesson Flows is to help teachers combine inspiring teaching practices with great digital tools. For each part of the lesson plan you will be able to curate and add web tools that can best meet its objectives.lesson flow

Here is an example of a Lesson Flow created by a digital learning specialist. Follow the link above for more examples of Lesson Flows created by other teachers.

While the idea seems great, I was not very successful in creating a sample Lesson Flow.  After filling in the requisite parts, a digital tool was suggested.  But I did not find any way to access that digital tool.  I’m still not sure if I am supposed to supply the tool or it is somehow available in the process.

If anyone makes more progress than I did, please share.