Edison Robots - Bringing them in organically into Auroa Primary School

It is currently week nine of School term. Having just had a staff meeting when the subject of the TAI came up I thought that it would be apt to review the current situations relating to the use of the robots in the school.

Currently I have run sessions in four of the school classrooms - all junior school. I ran a thirty minute introduction session when I worked with the classroom teacher to promote the technology. We used a group of six robots. Following this two of the teachers accessed the technology to run additional sessions with thier classroom groups. In addition to that a teacher aide has used a robot to place in the classroom with two ORS funded students to engage them with their work.

EdisonIdeas2017 from myles webb on Vimeo.
Above: A Y2 class of students using the Edison in class in combination with blocks to 'park' the edison in a garage.  This session was run independently by the teacher without myself present.

I am currently scheduled to be in one of three remaining classrooms on Friday and will then take care of the last two classrooms as time permits (my release day is Friday and this is also a technology day). There have been some teething difficulty based around some of the use of robots - two of the initial six 'melted' due to a malfunction of the production process which caused replacement parts to be sent from Auckland.

This has left us with a set of thirteen robots, of these 12 are in regular classroom circulation and one is being reserved for the ORS funded students who are in the adjacent classroom.   Ideally the teachers would be seeking out the technology to use in conjunction with the students.  This has just started to happen but has not happened yet to the desired level and will remain a work in progress.

I have had six of these supplied by the Edison Company, who have also been made aware of my research and I have been asked as an official endorsement for the product for advertising.