"Each of the students has such specific needs, but I really liked learning to use the robot to work with each one," says Warren Hills Regional High School senior Kenneth Wilson, who worked with a NAO robot to share with special needs students.
"IT WAS EXCITING and strange to see the robot interacting with kids for the first time," says Tyler Henning, who, with fellow student Nick Gagliano, began programming a NAO robot to interact with special education students in 2013, when they were juniors at Warren Hills Regional High School.
"The special ed kids were all raising their hands and trying to volunteer, and the teachers kept smiling because it's usually so hard to keep kids' attention."
As Kenneth Wilson, a senior at Warren Hills Regional High School, looks on, the NAO robot he prepared for classroom work does a little dance. Henning and Gagliano had programmed the robot to do push-ups and other exercises, and to help teach students to recognize different denominations of paper money. "It was everything we had typed into a computer, so it was like us talking to them," says Henning. "But it was the robot talking and they treated it like a human."
Their high school's computer science department is among the most advanced in the state (offering five levels of computer science, including post-AP classes), but the students, who have moved on to college, agree that the challenge isn't about the coding.
"The challenges were in defining a project in a very real way, collaborating and setting timelines. It's about logic and math thinking," Gagliano says.
The duo also learned about the need to see their work in action. "It wasn't our original intent to work with the robot in the classroom, but it turned out to be a good thing and we learned not to assume people would know what we meant," says Henning.
RELATED: Robots assist students with special needs
Kenneth Wilson, a senior who worked with the robot during the 2014-15 school year, says he was intimidated at first. "Each of the students has such specific needs, but I really liked learning to use the robot to work with each one and seeing how they react. And I even threw in some fun gags. Like if they got the answer right, the robot yelled, 'Woo hoo' and waved his arms. The kids loved it!"
Daryl Detrick, computer science teacher at the school, says the greatest value in working with the robot is that students learn that they have skills that can change people's lives. "Tyler, Nick and Kenneth all put in a tremendous amount of time and I think they benefited as much as the special needs students. It inspires students when they work on a meaningful project."
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