This week one of our classmates couldn’t get to class so they attended class via robot. It was much more useable than I was picturing when our teacher mentioned this was a possibility. There was a video of him (similar to skype) attached to a little robot body and he could actually physically move around the classroom. For schools and students with money this seems like an amazing advancement that we could use to help keep students updated on what is going on in class when they can’t attend.  I was very impressed with how easy the technology worked and how easily our classmate could follow along from home.

The only real problem I see with this technology is that it is still quite expensive. Most schools wouldn’t be able to afford enough of these to make it worthwhile. Even then does every student have a computer at home and a strong enough internet connection so that the video and audio don’t lag? There seem to be a lot of hoops to jump through before you could actually get this into a classroom and working for any student that needed it.

One thing I have noticed from researching where this technology has been used before is that so far  it has mostly been used for one student who needed it every day rather than as a tool anyone in the class could use. I wonder what steps would need to happen for it to change in that way. It could be an extremely powerful tool if it was more accessible. For example, if a student wasn’t feeling too well but could still attend class via robot, they could keep their germs at home and possibly not get anyone else sick.

In conclusion, this technology could be extremely useful, but I think we need a more cost effective solution before it can be completely accessible.

Here is an example of one boy who uses the robot daily: