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Wisconsin Kids Get Lucky in Learning with Instructional Robot

Students can see the face of a coach on the robot's screen and interact with him or her in real time, providing research-validated instruction to students and ongoing professional development to teachers.

 (Tribune News Service) — Sitting at a table, Lex Globke watched as intervention specialist Trudy Horlacher held up flashcards with vowel sounds on them.

Using one of his fingers, he wrote the letters “ar” in the air, saying the sound as his index finger made the “a” and the “r.” Horlacher then held up another card and asked the third-grader at Osseo Elementary School to repeat the exercise, but this time, Globke didn’t provide the correct sound.

“We’ll get these, bud,” said Horlacher, who turned him over to a new kind of teacher’s aide — an instructional robot.

Named Lucky, the robot resembles an iPad on a small Segway, a two-wheeled, self-balancing, battery-powered electric vehicle.

Through the technology, funded through a state Department of Public Instruction grant, students and teachers in five school districts in Cooperative Educational Service Agency 10’s region — Osseo-Fairchild, Neillsville, Lake Holcombe, Fall Creek and Bloomer — were linked with Lindamood-Bell instructional coaches who provided research-validated instruction to students and ongoing professional development to teachers in the class.

Thanks to an Internet connection, students could see the face of a coach on Lucky’s screen and interact with him or her in real time.

“It’s kind of like having another teacher in the classroom,” said Sarah James, school psychologist and Lucky’s keeper while the robot was used in the Osseo school district for the past two weeks.

That said, the robot technology “doesn’t replace the traditional face-to-face learning, but expands, enriches and supports teachers developing reading and comprehension skills with students,” educators said.

During his time in the district, Lucky was shared among three teachers, including Horlacher, who used the robot when working with general and special education students.

“Technology is becoming more and more a part of education,” said Horlacher, who went to a training session and participated in after-school webinars before Lucky’s arrival earlier this month, and while her students are used to technology, “they’re pretty fascinated with Lucky.”

The instructional robot also was a hit in the Fall Creek school district, where Lucky was used with elementary special education students, said Kelly Speckien, director of special education and school psychologist.

“It was fun to have Lucky here,” she said. “It would be neat if more schools could have the opportunity to use the robot.”

Following up on Horlacher’s instruction Thursday at Osseo Elementary, Aaron Darbee — whose face took up Lucky’s tablet’s screen for that session — offered the word “gate” to Globke and asked the student to spell the term relying on the vowel sounds he knew.

“G-A-T-E,” Globke said.

“Great,” Darbee said. “How would you change that to ‘fate’?”

“F-A-T-E,” Globke said.

During that session and an earlier one with two other third-grade students, Horlacher paused to ask Darbee, a consultant with the Lindamood-Bell Learning Center in Bellevue, Wash., questions.

“They’re here to help,” Horlacher said.

Globke liked interacting with the robot.

“It’s fun,” said the student who particularly liked how Lucky moved.

When on, Lucky — directed by an instructional coach on a keyboard — could roll itself down the school’s hallway to a particular classroom on its mobile base or around a room to get a better view of the students and teacher it was working with. The robot also could be carried from room to room.

Now that its time in west-central Wisconsin has ended, Lucky, manufactured by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Double Robotics, will be sent back home, James said.

©2015 the Leader-Telegram (Eau Claire, Wis.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC