Can Robots Inspire New Learning In Kids?
I just came from International CES, and the products featured were outstanding. The mRobo Ultra Bass was one of the products unveiled at CES by Tosy. It is a cutting-edge portable speaker that seconds as a fully-functional robot that interacts by dancing to the music of your choice. There was an entire section two rows long the length of a football field segmented for robotics alone. A good portion of this section was directly related to children and kid-related activities. Can the use of robots inspire creativity in children?
What if robots were a part of your everyday life – at school and beyond?
This is the question that was presented to children across the world by Latitude, an international research consultancy, asking the kids to draw and create a short story to answer the question. Latitude in collaboration with LEGO® Learning Institute & Project Synthesis has published ROBOTS @ SCHOOL which is published for upcoming entrepreneurs and already established companies as a opening to new discoveries and sharing of knowledge. It helped to identify frustrations in the learning process and in turn offer pliable resolutions. These solutions offered were both low- and high-tech.
The results of this study were that children have a tendency to think of technology as human. They were raised in a technology saturated environment so it is not too far fetched to understand how a child can think of a robot as a genuine companion. They are inundated since birth and many children's first word is "hello" while holding a cell phone-like object in their hand. Naturally, kids will think of technology as humanistic.
Quoted from the study:
"From our recent work with children, we know that young people instinctively expect technology to respond to them in very human-like ways—to motivate and empower them, often serving as a sort of companion, rather than merely a tool for solving specific problems. In this way, our study isn’t about robots, per se; it’s about something much bigger. Robots are a useful proxy for understanding kids’ social, creative and learning aspirations in ways that might be more illuminating than if we engaged them directly on such issues. Robots allow kids to project their weaknesses, strengths and ambitions. Of course, they’re also the embodiment of AI, helping us understand generally how we might want to interact with a whole new breed of machine intelligence in the future."
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