Here Come the Robots – Again
The Korea Times is reporting that newly placed robots in test elementary school classrooms have proven “effective.” According to the article:
The students showed notable improvement in speaking ability…
If the students who come to my hogwon, after having been learning in public schools, represent the general level of learning, any improvement would be notable. I don’t know what or how they teach, but those kids, some of whom have studied for over a year in the after-school English classes, can’t put together a single sentence in English. As the only foreigner at my hogwon, I am given the responsibility of testing them – in front of their mothers – to determine ability and potential class placement. Many a mother has been chagrined to find their precious little snowflakes can neither understand nor respond to simple questions such as “where do you live?” or “did you go to school today?” I’m not saying all elementary English programs are worthless, but every single child I’ve tested who has studied at an elementary school, sucks. Therefore, I wonder about the claimed improvement the students experienced.
The article goes on to say that:
…along with increased interest and motivation in learning English. … The robots had a positive effect in giving students an equal learning opportunity and producing a higher level of engagement during classes… They also contributed to more creative and lively classes.
Sure, bring a robot to class and the kids will perk up. Bring a frigging Nintendo DS to class and they’ll perk up, too. For that matter, I have a litter of puppies at home. I’ve brought them to class – you’ve never seen a more rapt bunch of students. “Want to pet the puppy, Jun Ho? First you have to correctly speak the sentences.” The robot testing lasted a mere eight weeks. Give it a few months and the robots will be just as passée as the cassette player. Let’s see then how well the little nuggets learn when the newness wears off.
As a former technologist, I am also qualified to write on part of the equation left out of the article: maintenance. Who updates the robot’s lesson plans? Who repairs the hardware when the little angels have somehow shorted it out with a paperclip? And for the robots who have speech recognition ability, presumably they would record answers for testing and trending purposes. Who backs up the data? All of these issues add to the overall cost that is not addressed in the KT article. But as a man who came of age in the 70s and 80s when we were all told computers would replace humans I can tell you it only adds people and costs. There’s no denying that replacing Native English teachers like us would be the ultimate goal of such a program – we’re such a pesky bunch after all. But looking at the total package and not just the emotionally charged issues of dealing with foreigners is required.
Despite the glowing recommendation that the Korea Times gives the project, I’m not polishing up my resume in search of another career any time soon.
Brian in Jeollanam-do has a lot more history on the subject of robots in classrooms for your reading enjoyment.
Haha, after teaching in a public school last year and seeing the ‘open classes’ I can just imagine how the effectiveness of the robots was tested.
If you didn’t know better you’d walk away from the open classes thinking, “those students are brilliant!” too. I wonder how many times they had the replies drilled into them before they were put on display?
If the robots stopped the kids from descending into an endless cycle of ‘fine thanks, and you’ after they ask you how you are, then they’ve probably made a worthwhile improvement.
[...] on, Chosun Ilbo, can’t you come up a better to generate interest? How about robots in [...]
Band-aid solution to a larger problem. It is amazing how much money is spent on avoiding the real problem of lack of training and development of English teachers. This years they started sending more Korean teachers abroad to train in Canada and the US. Then they take the needed money to further develop those programs and put it into a silly-looking version of “Robo-cop” which in fact looks more like a creepy-looking DVD player.
There is an business principle that works on the balance of Product (English) vs Production capacity (English Teachers). It is very simple but so effective. Too much time and money spent on one side will kill your business. What I see everyday is so much time and money spent on idiotic nonsense to make the product look good and very little time on actually improving the teachers.
When you have a group of Korean teachers that can barely speak the language and look down on their foreign co-teachers and a group of foreign teachers that have no idea how to teach, of course your system is going to fail. Not to mention when the only training that the MOE’s give is on how to make kimchi and various cultural studies, no one is going to know what to do in the classroom.
To make matters worse the openly complain about the foreign teachers every chance they get (including meetings of the MOE and conferences on teaching) So that the negative stereotypes get reinforced by the top brass in the country. No one should know how much foreign teachers make, just like I don’t know or care about how much my co-teachers makes. These is just a few of the core issues surround the problem.
How long will it be before the Ani-English Spectrum starts stalking these robots?
[...] reported on robots in the classroom before (here and here) when we found the Korean media outlets promoting them as if they were God’s gift to [...]
[...] we’ve written about Korea’s efforts to introduce robots into the classroom. (See here, here and here). In the two years since those articles came out, robots haven’t made much headway [...]