Teachers do more than teach: they keep track of student progress every day. How else could they monitor students’ levels of achievement and prepare them for moving up the academic ladder? Although tracking is an essential teaching tool, it can be a formidable task from time to time. Because teachers can get bogged down with daily tasks, like curricular planning, grading student work, and classroom management, they are relieved when they can find ways to make their jobs easier. One way to facilitate teachers’ work is to introduce robotics in every classroom.
Tracking with Robots: Importance in Education
It has been proposed that robots will become indispensable to educators in the next decade, helping them revolutionize the teaching profession. That being said, how are teachers now taking the advantage of robots in their classrooms in preparation for the trend toward educational robotics? One technique educators of today are implementing in pre-school classes and beyond is the use of robots for tracking the educational growth of young learners. Despite a few drawbacks, like misuse of student data and demand for cybersecurity, tracking learning progress with state-of-the-art robotics is invaluable to teachers. The three, glaring benefits of using educational robots to track student progress include fortifying pedagogy, enhancing curriculum design, and improving student evaluation.
Fortifying Pedagogy
Introducing robotics-based pedagogies early in children’s schooling allows teachers to integrate cognitive, social/cultural, and aesthetic elements for their students’ learning progress, interest, and motivation. Because effective pedagogy requires the monitoring of student progress, tracking robotics support teachers who not only assess student progress but also reflect on their teaching. Thus, by giving teachers time to evaluate their own teaching prowess, educational robots that track students help teachers determine and adjust the impact of their own instructional strategies. For instance, after getting undesirable student data from a robot, a teacher may decide to reteach a lesson, so students understand the material.
Enhancing Curriculum Design
Since the goal of curriculum design is to drive instructional strategies, which “push students toward achieving mastery,” information gleaned from robots can be used by teachers who tailor-make lessons to meet individual students’ needs. Moreover, robotics can give teachers the abilities to access real-time information about students. With instant details provided by such equipment as eye-tracking mechanisms and physiological sensors, a teacher can determine the causes of a student’s low performance and realign learning objectives or alter curricular materials.
Improving Student Evaluation
With educational robotics, it is possible for teachers to let their students share in the evaluation process. Robotics-based activities often involve problem-based learning, an instructional strategy that supports students’ active involvement in their own learning progress. Hence, robotics help to improve the ways students think critically and creatively. Further, robots provide teachers with better ways of collecting useful data. In addition to tracking annual student progress and targeted benchmarks, robots can be programmed to measure students’ progress toward their personal goals and performance compared to their peers. With this data, teachers can work with students to make actionable goals of learning that help them stay on track.
Wrapping It Up
In closing, a robot is a wonderful feat of technology that has many benefits compared to drawbacks, especially in the realm of education. Fortifying pedagogy, enhancing curriculum design, and improving student evaluation are major advantages brought about by the integration of educational robots in schools. It is advisable for both parents and educators to embrace this technology as it is a pervasive facet of future society.
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