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I, Robot
“We wanted to look at how learning happens in the real world,” explained Bilge Mutlu, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Mutlu and colleague Dan Szafir are testing a robot-teacher to see if it will increase students’ retention of lessons. The pair programmed their automaton to tell students a story in a one-on-one situation. Sensors attached to students monitored the area of the brain that manages learning and attentiveness. When a student’s attention level dropped, the robot responded by speaking louder or using arm gestures. Andrew Ng, director of Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab and co-founder of online classroom Coursera, said using robots to enhance student engagement has “significant implications” for education. “The vision of automatically measuring student engagement so as to build a more interactive teacher is very exciting,” Ng said.
Making the best of a bad situation
Overcrowding at one B.C. school is forcing teachers and students to use the school’s hallways for their physical education classes. Lord Tweedsmuir Secondary School, in Surrey, will set up Ping-Pong tables and indoor curling equipment for students whenever it’s raining, because the school’s two gyms are fully booked. The school was built to accommodate 1,460 students, but already this year has 1,900 students and eight portable classrooms. Gordon Masi, a Tweedsmuir physical education teacher and former school trustee, commented that “PE teachers are being really creative” when it comes to using hallways or stairways for physical activities. But Jennifer Wadge, president of the Surrey Teachers’ Association, said, “It is extremely challenging to deliver an appropriate physical education curriculum in these circumstances.”
