Communications of the ACM
Reading, Writing and Robotics: Bringing Cultural Education to Texas School Districts
Baylor University Libraries will use VGo to deliver collections and services such as virtual tours to schools that don't have access to such resources.
Credit: InformationWeek
A sleek white remotely-controlled robot soon will be used by Baylor University Libraries to enrich future curriculum for children in grades K-12 across Texas and perhaps the United States.
Funding for cultural aspects of education has been cut drastically in many public schools, but "cultural experiences are very important to a child's education. We'd like to see that restored," says Pattie Orr, vice president for information technology and dean of University Libraries at Baylor.
Baylor has committed to purchase a VGo robot, a four-foot-tall device which allows a user to see through its camera, hear through its microphone and interact through its speakers. Rather than simply providing a virtual tour of museums, art galleries and libraries, it can deliver instruction to schools by making conversation possible between the user — who directs it remotely with a computer mouse — and those at a different site, who can view the user on the robot's screen, says Tim Logan, assistant vice president of the Electronic Library at Baylor University.
"This is a new and different use for the VGo," says John Nye, vice president of sales and business development for New Hampshire-based VGo Communications Inc. The robot currently is used by businesses and for enabling students with disabilities or immune-deficiencies to attend school without leaving home.
Baylor, Education Service Center Region 12 in Texas, and the Texas Education Telecommunications Network are exploring how best to use the VGo to enrich learning for school districts.
"We're planning to provide content and services from Baylor, but the robot could be used in various venues," Logan says. "Our ideas for Baylor locations include virtual tours of Armstrong Browning Library, The Texas Collection and possibly Mayborn Museum Complex, for starters. The robot could provide access to resources that many schools don't have.
"We've got the technology, the places and the partners, but now we're looking forward to program content," he says. "We're optimistic we can deliver unique material. For this to work, it really needs to be matched up with educational goal elements for the STAAR [State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness] test and specific curricular goals."
Besides having wireless video-conferencing capability, the robot can be guided from room to room by the user. It integrates a camera, microphones and video display on a light-weight, motorized, remote-controlled platform.
"The user can see and be seen, hear and be heard," Logan says. "It pivots, and the camera can go up and down and zoom in. It can't open doors, punch an elevator button or go down stairs, but it has sensors to prevent it from going off the edge of steps or bumping into a wall.
"From a social and psychological standpoint, it's amazing," Logan says.
Teachers would need special software to connect to it — perhaps through a preconfigured laptop — as well as a camera for the connecting computer and a computer projector or large screen for group viewing, Logan says.
"Baylor is working to develop a portable pre-set 'laptop in a bag' or a 'network in a bag' to make it easy for our classroom partners to connect with our robot," Orr says.
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