Part of our research included interviews with public school educators, homeschooling parents, and a developers of “telepresence robotic devices.”
We interviewed Dr. Faccio, a principal at a New Hyde Park High School.
Dr. Faccio, in response to our question about a small robot that would “substitute” for an absent student:
“I love it. The school district is trying to put together a program that uses Skype. We don’t have the ability to raise its hand, and it’s hard to have that classroom interaction. The idea of the robot being able to physically raise its hand would allow the student more opportunities, as the student can’t orally ask to answer a question. Since it would be fairly small, it wouldn’t distract the kids in the classroom.”
In response to our question, Do you think this will help cut down on the number of home tutors?
“Definitely! If the students would be able to “attend” school in this way, it’ll allow them to actually learn in school without having to hire someone to come every day, and everyone wants to save money these days.”
He also added,
“Some cancer students have to go to chemotherapy, which makes them stay home for six weeks. In those six weeks, that’s a lot of valuable knowledge being lost. Let’s say a student goes in for chemo on Monday. They can rest on Tuesday, but then they could hook up their phone or iPad to the one in school, and they could attend and learn instead of having to make up a bulk of work before their next treatment.”
“Actually, I have an idea for you. What if you could hook up that tablet or iPad and be able to have the teacher scan in a handout or a worksheet, the student could download it on their iPad or tablet and print it out, complete it, and scan it back in and send it to the teacher, who could check their work?”
We have incorporated that idea into our idea.
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