Social Robots Empower Learners

Social Robots Empower Learners

When I was presenting at the state STEM conference, I met Milo from RoboKind. I was amazed that there was a humanoid robot being used to help students with Autism (Robots4Autism). I was curious about how RoboKind's platform was expanding into Robots4STEM with Jett. Further,  I learned that the company was going to come out with a female robot named Robon. I started to wonder what would happen if I had a female robot that could be used to help girls to learn to code. We need to empower more girls to pursue the computer science field. Well, I ended-up getting the first female humanoid from the company. I heard that Girls Who Code clubs were now including younger girls, so I started my club with third graders. The girls spent one hour a week learning through the RoboKind's missions. Essentially, the girls learned about key coding terms and concepts. The girls use block code to code an avatar. Then the robot is connected to the code that the girls write- The girls see that their code makes an impact! The girls in my club applied what they learned to individual projects. The girls taught lessons to younger students. The girls coded Robon to act as a teacher assistant throughout the lesson. You can see some examples of their work on our Girls Who Code Robot website. I decided that I was going to take this a step further. I decided to code Robon to act as a teaching assistant in my classroom.  My research about social robots led to development of Redcay's STEM-oscope Model that is used to describe the connections between the use of social robots, STEM Education, and Metacognition. InTechOpen is publishing my research in Sept. in a book that is coming out in the UK. Additionally, the research is published as an Open Resource called "Redcay's STEM-oscope Model." Teachers will not be replaced by robots. Rather, teachers will code humanoid robots to act as teacher assistants in the classroom.

I will be sharing about how I use social robots to empower learners at the KTI2019 Summit on Tuesday, July 23rd from 2:45-4.