New Student Robotics Kits seen at the ISTE 2013 Conference

I’m just back from the wonderful ISTE annual conference in San Antonio where I experienced blissful information/inspiration overload for the past few days (BTW... ISTE = International Society for Technology in Education ).

I was thrilled to see that throughout the conference student robotics were present and attracting attention from the many, many thousands of educators in attendance! I didn’t get to see all of the robotics products, demonstrations, workshops, and poster sessions based on the student robotics theme, but I did see quite a few. Below are the things that caught my interest and admiration. I’ll be revisiting these in the weeks to come and hope my investigations prove informative and useful to the readers of this blog. The big takeaway for me from ISTE 2013 is that student robotics is growing and diversifying, which means that soon it will assume more of its rightful rock-star place among the pantheon of favored instructional approaches and practices in our schools. Hey, the kids deserve it and we owe it to them. If we expect to be able to look them in the eye down the road as we mutually think back and reflect over what sort of education we provided them, then we really must include robotics…

Mark Gura


For the original, cleaner version of the video, CLICK>>>http://video.foxnews.com/v/2100891943001/lego-robo-tech-gets-upgrade-with-new-mindstorms-/?playlist_id=929831913001

LEGO’s new EV3 KIT - - There were quite a few vendor booths with robotics kits to offer on the sales floor of the conference. LEGO Education was there with a very prominent booth to show off its new EV3 generation of robotics materials. This one follows the evolution from the RCX version on to the NXT, and now on to EV3 http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/ev3_core_set/2578

Thanks very much to Ms. Jenni Breeze of LEGO Education who gave me a one-on-one explanation and demo. EV3 is clearly a next level improvement over the current NXT materials. And considering that after a year or two, EV3 is what will be available, we really should get ourselves up to speed on it as soon as is practical. The kits aren’t available yet (as I understand it) but will be soon.

Before I forget, thanks so much to Trisha McDonnell of LEGO Education, too, for participating in the session I ran at the conference The Technology Literacy Connection: What’s New and Inspiring. Her presentation of LEGO’s WeDO Robotics and Story Starter as part of the mix was very well  received! (Robotics and Literacy Learning? Absolutely! In fact, I devoted a full chapter of the book Getting Started with LEGO Robotics to it.

 

K*NEX (Computer Control) Kits; http://www.knex.com  Their booth had a very nice display of machines that students can build with these materials. These are tethered to a computer so that they can be programmed and controlled. They appear to be great STEM resources. While lurking about their booth I heard the rumor that they will be releasing a new and improved generation of these materials soon that will not require direct connection to the computer to operate. In other words, they’ll be autonomous robots. I can’t wait to see what they come up with!




Barobo Mobot http://www.barobo.com/products/mobot/ Here’s a very novel approach to robots that kids build; Barobo, which is a modular system for creating bots. The idea is for kids to put the modules together in a variety of configurations to create the robots they imagine. These are programmable, but with a high degree of independence from a computer. It’s great to see something truly different. I’ll be investigating this very promising resource more down the road.



VEX’s new IQ robotics materials http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexiq/ - VEX caught my attention a few years back with its robotics materials, which are on a bigger, stronger, and more expensive in scale than the LEGO materials. I got a quick look at their new IQ materials at the conference though, which struck me as being of the same sort of scale as LEGO’s Mindstorms/NXT materials, that are so popular in American middle schools. VEX IQ seems to me to be very good, versatile materials that will appeal to teachers and students. I’ll be investigating these, too, over the next few months.

Kids, Could a Robot Be Your Friend?

"Robots Could Be Future Playmates for Kids

As technology continues to improve, humanlike robots will likely play an ever-increasing role in our lives: They may become tutors for children, caretakers for the elderly, office receptionists or even housemaids. Children will come of age with these androids, which naturally raises the question: What kind of relationships will kids build with personified robots?

Children will view humanoid robots as intelligent social and moral beings, allowing them to develop substantial and meaningful relationships with the machines, new research suggests.

Researchers analyzed the interactions between nearly 100 children and Robovie, a 3-foot-tall (0.9 meters) robot developed by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute in Japan. In the study, two technicians controlled Robovie remotely from another room, leading the children to believe that the robot was autonomous. The researchers imparted humanlike behavior to the robot, such as having Robovie claim unfair treatment when he was told to go into the closet at the end of the interaction sessions.

Follow-up interviews with the children showed that the kids believed Robovie had mental states, such as being intelligent and having feelings, and was a social entity capable of being a friend and confidante. Many of the children also believed that Robovie deserved fair treatment and should not be psychologically harmed. [10 Things That Make Humans Special]

"We typically think [of] robots as rational calculators rather than humanlike and emotional," said Adam Waytz, a psychologist at Northwestern University in Illinois, who was not involved in the study. "But this research provides a nice example of how endowing a robot with emotions can lead children to treat the robot as a companion and to consider its moral standing."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.livescience.com/19164-robots-future-playmates-kids.html

Student Focus Question(s):  Do you think that you could consider a robot a friend? Even if a robot wouldn't be your first choice, could one be your  friend in extreme circumstances? (what if you were marooned on a deserted space station? What if you were sick and in a hospital isolation ward?) How might a robot be a better friend than a human? How do you feel robots would make far worse friends than real people?

After thinking about this, you can enter your response using the "Comments" function, below (to the left of the envelope icon). Feel free to identify your school and/or class....

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Click on book cover for information on Getting Started with LEGO Robotics.

Anyone who works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too) This books explains it all!

Check out ROBOTICS for TEACHERS Podcast
www.roboticsforteachers.com

Kids: Do You Think Robots Should Be Programmed to Recognize Human Emotions?

"If Our Gadgets Could Measure Our Emotions

ON a recent family outing, my mother and sister got into a shouting match. But they weren’t mad at each other — they were yelling at the iPhone’s turn-by-turn navigation system. I interrupted to say that the phone didn’t understand — or care — that they were upset.


“Honey, we know,” my mom replied. “But it should!”
She had a point. After all, computers and technology are becoming only smarter, faster and more intuitive. Artificial intelligence is creeping into our lives at a steady pace. Devices and apps can anticipate what we need, sometimes even before we realize it ourselves. So why shouldn’t they understand our feelings? If emotional reactions were measured, they could be valuable data points for better design and development. Emotional artificial intelligence, also called affective computing, may be on its way.

But should it be? After all, we’re already struggling to cope with the always-on nature of the devices in our lives. Yes, those gadgets would be more efficient if they could respond when we are frustrated, bored or too busy to be interrupted, yet they would also be intrusive in ways we can’t even fathom today. It sounds like a science-fiction movie, and in some ways it is. Much of this technology is still in its early stages, but it’s inching closer to reality.


Companies like Affectiva, a start-up spun out of the M.I.T. Media Lab, are working on software that trains computers to recognize human emotions based on their facial expressions and physiological responses. A company called Beyond Verbal, which has just raised close to $3 million in venture financing, is working on a software tool that can analyze speech and, based on the tone of a person’s voice, determine whether it indicates qualities like arrogance or annoyance, or both..."

Read the full article at its source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/02/technology/if-our-gadgets-could-measure-our-emotions.html?ref=science

Student Focus Question(s):  Do you think that robots should recognize human  emotions?All robots or just some of them? Which types of robots  do you feel would be better if they could  recognize emotions? Which emotions would be most useful? If a robot couild recognize and react to human emotions, would that make it more like a real person or would it simply be a machine that worked better to serve humans?After thinking about this, you can enter your response using the "Comments" function, below (to the left of the envelope icon). Feel free to identify your school and/or class....

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Click on book cover for information on Getting Started with LEGO Robotics.

Anyone who works with kids can do LEGO Robotics, a rich and highly motivating platform for important STEM Learning! (surprisingly affordable, too) This books explains it all!

Check out ROBOTICS for TEACHERS Podcast
www.roboticsforteachers.com