Imagine a classroom with a teacher at the whiteboard and students at their work stations, joined by mobile robots through which additional students can participate in the class from another school miles away.
Robots in the classroom? Is this a futuristic movie?
No, it is happening right now, in schools in rural Kansas.
Pam Irwin is superintendent of USD 240, which serves the communities of Bennington and Tescott. Each community has a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade center. Pam is a native of Hays with four degrees from Fort Hays State and 29 years of education experience. She works with Anissa Bigler, a Council Grove native who is a K-State grad and now teaching in USD 240.
Pam became school superintendent in July 2020. The school board charged her with expanding the educational offerings for students in the district.
Meanwhile, the Rural Education Center in Kansas State University’s College of Education had successfully applied for two federal distance learning technology grants that would fund and deploy what were called “telepresence robots” in rural schools. Spencer Clark, director of the Rural Education Center, said there were 29 Kansas sites receiving the robots, two of which were in USD 240.
