Designing a Robot for Cultural Brokering in Education

ERIX FLORES

Kim, Yanghee. “Designing a Robot for Cultural Brokering in Education.” Educational Technology, vol. 56, no. 4, 2016, pp. 41–43. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44430477.

SUMMARY:

Yanghee is a educational technology educator, and one thing that she developed for the public is that many elementary ESL students perform lower in their core content classes than the native English speaker in The United States which is pretty self evident why students do not perform at the rigor of The United States curriculum. 

Moreover, Yanghee identifies the reason why ESL elementary students do not perform at the level of their English speaking peers, and do not acquire the language as in an effective manner.  The reason is that many ESL students are being taught inefficiently is with teachers only teaching English that only an American audience which none of these ESL students are.  We are speaking about recent immigrants who come from a country that is not The United States, so they cannot relate to a lecture that only connects with the American culture.  The solution that the author has come up is that we design these so called ''robots'' that can relate with the culture and ethnic background.  The author states that children at that age range develop some form of attachment with these technological gadgets which can help the English acquisition.  These robots can take the form of toys, tables, smartphones, computers, and applications.  It all depends to the ESL educator and children on how they want to design this ''technological robot'' that is a cultural broker. 

REFLECTION:

Although I only teach secondary and have no experience with teaching elementary I thought this would be a great approach of bursting out of my bubble and experience on how to approach ESL students in elementary and if the reader  really thinks about this topic both a child and an adolescent or even adult think at the same level when it comes to their second language.  Both the ESL child and adult are at the same level of their second language proficiency, so I can see this technological robot work with adolescent and adults as well.  The difference here is that adolescents and adults do not think as a child even though they are at the same level of language proficiency which can be a disadvantage to the adolescent and the adult since they are not going to get the full benefit of the method, so modifications and adjustments for adults and adolescents are needed to be done.  However, with the method this can help all age groups in order to help ESL students acquire a second language since we live in a technological based world this is why the author of the article did not specify which robots can be used with the ESL learners because it is up to the teacher and ESL student which robot they want to develop that fits their culture, age, gender and things of that nature.  Moreover, the author remains ambiguous in which technological robot they can use as the cultural broker, and like I mentioned on the summary, it can either be a toy, smartphone, tables, laptops, computers, and many more it all depends on the person and teacher.

Overall, this is the reason why I like this article because the author acknowledges that there is cultural identity in technology or it can be developed due to the high use of technology in The United States.  Technological development has evolved so rapidly that there is a lot of resources that can  be used in order to succeed academically not only for ESL but in education in general. 

QUOTATIONS:

 Current educational challenges associated with increasing learner diversity demand that educators rethink  prevalent instructional practice in the classroom. Viewing CLD children as having a deficit, while positioning them in marginalized groups like "remedial" or "ESL" kids, makes it less likely that they will see mainstream paths to educational success.

 Moreover, the boundaries between real and virtual are blurred to many young children (Turkle, 2011). Children interact socially with digital technologies much like they do with humans (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Not surprisingly, children develop emotional attachments to digital toys and personal relationships with a sociable robot, viewing the robot as their playmate (Breazeal, 2002).

Also, digital media and print tools each have unique complementary affordances mediating children's learning experiences. Many digital technologies use metaphors of familiar print materials when presenting educational content, such as flashcards and storybooks.