South korea schools are lack of English teachers, so they used to hire foreign teachers, but korean people don't trust them because they accuse foreigners of being promiscuous (They even have to take and AIDS test if they want to enter the country) as a solution for this issue, Korea has invented robot teachers called Engkeys.
Engkeys are 3-foot tall egg-shaped devices developed by Korea Institute of Science of Technology (KIST) which display an occidental woman face on a screen. This robot is controlled by English teachers in the Philippines, who can observe the class from another place and students will hear them and the robot will even copy teachers' reaction, thanks to cameras watching his or her face. Besides reproducing what the teacher is saying, these machines have software programs that allow them play educational games and sing songs with the kids, as we can see in the video:Engkeys have been well received by the children, who have declared that they feel more confident talking with a robot than with a present teacher and they feel more curious to learn. Obviously authorities have been pleased with this invention too, because hiring a long distance teacher is much cheaper than bring him/her to the country.
This is definitely a good invention, especially because there is still a human controlling it, but it is at the same time a tool to make discrimination even bigger.
What do you think about this? would you like to have a talking robot in the classroom instead of a real person?
This is very interesting. It is amazing how robots can perform as real humans. Koreans are very smart to create robots! I don't think this is a matter of discrimination. If they don't trust in people, they have to make sure person who they are working with are really trustworthy,I agree with it. They are a special culture, very reserved, traditional, conservative, etc. They want to maintain their culture like that.
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with Natalyn since I do not see Korean people's reaction as a discriminatory act; it is just a matter of culture.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I found your entry really interesting,Catalina. I had not heard about it before. For me at least it is really strange to think in a robot teaching English, but nothing is impossible for technology.
I think this may be a good idea for Koreans but it would be difficult to use one of those robots in other educational contexts. Chilean students for example, need to have a real life person standing in from of them in order to behave. I think that it would be difficult to control students discipline when we only can see them through a camera. They would probably find it too interesting and they would start touching it. Maybe in ten or twenty years, chilean people will be more prepared for this amazing technology.
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