Merci Beaucoup Mr Roboto

MERCI BEAUCOUP MR ROBOTO

A NAO robot joined students during their French lessons this year, proving to be a useful and motivating classmate. The robot helped students to revise the contents of their course, and engages them with its catchy singing and dancing of relevant French grammar rules, as well as conversing with them about all sorts of topics.

Mrs Véronique Preau, who is running this new initiative in collaboration with Curtin University, said the robot was a fantastic assistant.

“My students have meaningful interactions with the robot and I love watching them try their best to be understood and persevere,” she said.

“I am delighted to see the progress my students make in their French skills with this new resource.”

The robot comes with some basic pre-programmed scenarios, and Mrs Preau also developed her own scenarios to match her students’ course week by week. Interested students were also given the opportunity to be involved in planning and programming new scenarios themselves.

“They demonstrated great creativity and enthusiasm, so much so that the School started to run after-school sessions to enhance students’ coding skills and develop more complex scenarios for the robot to perform,” Mrs Preau said.

Pierre Cappe, from the Faculty of Science and Engineering at Curtin University, helped run the extension sessions and taught the students coding.

“I have worked with NAO robots before but using one in a language classroom is very innovative,” Mr Cappe said.

“To teach coding with such a robot is great, you can quickly start writing a program and you get a direct response from the robot.”

“The human-like features and movements of a NAO robot make it attractive to students who tend to form a sort of relationship with it,” Mrs Preau added.

“I have to confess that I got attached to this cute robot too and I often have to remind myself that it is just clever computer programming!”

French students programming a NAO robot to mime and describe in French their favourite sports and hobbies.