Should Schools Buy Classroom Robots?
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses why buying an expensive classroom robot without a clear learning purpose is a bad leadership decision.
Key Takeaways
- Equity Requires Learning Value - Equity is not about buying the newest device; it's about making smart investments that improve student learning.
- Technology Needs a Theory of Action - School leaders should be able to explain exactly how a tool will support instruction before spending money on it.
- Expensive Gadgets Send the Wrong Message - A flashy $50,000 robot can make schools look careless about both instructional technology and public trust.
- Most Edtech Doesn't Automatically Help - New technology often has little positive impact, so leaders should be especially skeptical of costly, unproven tools.
- Public Decisions Deserve Public Scrutiny - Principals and district leaders should assume spending choices will be criticized because they're using other people's money for other people's kids.
Full Transcript
So, you remember the story about the robot that's been ordered for a high school classroom. Apparently, in response to all the criticism, the plans have been scrapped or put on hold so that students will not be getting that robot this fall, and maybe never, we'll see.
And it's interesting to read the response from school officials. You can see this in the New York Times, I'll try to put the link below. It's interesting that they don't seem to really understand...
the mistake they made. They don't seem to understand what was wrong with ordering a robot from that particular company. And, here's the thing, they don't seem to really understand what their rationale for ordering it was in the first place. There's a quote that says it's about, uh, equity
and making sure that students don't miss out on the latest technology. And I thought, does that just automatically mean we have to buy a $50,000 plus robot we don't want our students to miss out? Is that what equity is?
Or is equity about learning? Like, is this... Actually good for learning? Is this a good investment of our limited resources?
You know, even if resources aren't limited, is this a good idea? What is the actual rationale? And I couldn't find anything that said there is a reason to have a robot with some sort of weird body that is in the classroom. They said they didn't want it to just be a talking head because that would be creepy, so I guess it has, like, a torso up. But it can't walk. It's not, like, a fully humanoid robot.
But it is a robot... Like, how is that different from a computer that you type into, right? If you want students to use Google, or if you want them to use AI, which we need to be very careful about, can't they just type that into a computer? If you want them to be able to talk to an AI, all of the AIs have voice mode, or you can talk, you can, you know, play audio.
So, I don't understand what they were even going for with having a $50,000 robot that has a body. And obviously, there are drawbacks to that, right? Obviously, there are problems with putting a robot that is made by a very problematic company into classrooms. And a lot of you said, you know, my students would tear that up. It would be vandalized. It would get graffiti.
It would be mistreated. And, you know, maybe that is the case from an investment standpoint. Maybe it would just not be taken well care of. But I think the bigger thing we've got to look at is how does this look and how does this make us look to our parents when we are putting this type of device in a classroom
and saying this is instructional technology? That sends the message that we don't really know what instructional technology is or what it's for or why it's supposed to work. And the thing about most instructional technology is it doesn't really work.
It doesn't have a positive impact. But this just seems like an especially egregious example of something that is expensive and problematic, and we have no real theory of action for how it's supposed to work. And I think we've got to just avoid making that kind of mistake.
We've got to be thoughtful. We've got to assume that our decisions are going to be criticized because we're spending other people's money, and we're educating other people's kids. So we have a heightened responsibility to be really, really thoughtful, and I think that just didn't happen here.
Let me know what you think.