Swivl robot

An interesting new project from teacher education provider Hibernia College has seen the introduction of robots to a number of classrooms across the country.

However, these robots are not there to help children learn but instead monitor trainee teacher performances for the purpose of assisting new teachers in improving their interactions with students.

The Swivl is a video observation robot that connects to an iPad or smartphone and can rotate and tilt, ensuring it captures every interaction between students and their teacher.

Trainee teachers must review their own performance in class as part of their training, something which can be a bit difficult to do at the best of times.

Swivl greatly simplifies this task by providing trainee teachers with a video log of every class, enabling them to efficiently and effectively review their own performances and find any areas of concern that require improvement.

Generally, when we think of EdTech we imagine education technologies that are designed specifically for the benefit of students, so it’s great to see an EdTech company working on solutions for teachers instead.

The Swivl robot is quite an innovative idea and one that could not only benefit trainee teachers but teachers in general, providing them with invaluable information they might miss during class e.g. which students are responding well to lessons, which are having trouble concentrating etc.

Hibernia College introduced Swivl robots to Irish classrooms just over three months ago so the project is still in its early days, but a quick visit to the Swivl website shows the robot is in use in more than 30,000 classrooms and universities across the world.

Hopefully we’ll start to see the implementation of other innovative EdTech projects in Irish classrooms in the near future.