Learning can be as fun as driving radio-controlled cars, flying sensor-based helicopters, or even playing and interacting with mini transformers. Today, it takes much more than just the humdrum classroom chalk talks to engage students. Blurring the lines between fun and study, robots are creating a new paradigm for creativity and learning in the K-12 landscape. As much as students, both kids and teenagers, want to explore new things and play around with the robots, they also want to perceive the technology behind the robots as fundamentally human. Hence, the hunt for the perfect robotic educator is an incredibly challenging one for teachers. One such interesting account is that of Mauro Colucci, a Mechatronics teacher, and Maila Biaggi, an English language teacher at Vocational School’G. These teachers were introduced to the NAO humanoid robot when they were on the lookout for a human-like emotional robot that was completely programmable and could have a positive impact on their students. They programmed the NAO robot while collaborating with theirW students to help them prepare for performances in their drama school. NAO interacted with the budding actors in a manner one would expect from a friend or teacher, laughing, expressing anger, and much more. With NAO, the teachers could unleash the untapped capabilities of their students who were enthralled by the crying and laughing robot. The driving force behind this innovation that helped both the educators and students alike is RobotLAB. The company, on an ongoing basis, is fostering a culture of teaching with robotics. San Francisco-based RobotLAB is empowering the education ecosystem with their leading-edge online learning platform and humanoid robots, infusing the fun in learning and the play in knowledge. “We are reimagining the means of imparting education by providing an interactive, hands-on learning experience for STEM and other core subjects using robots,” says Elad Inbar, CEO of RobotLAB.

RobotLAB is transforming the modern-day classroom by providing educators with robots, both virtual and humanoid, along with curriculum, lesson plans, and activities. The company’s ingenious Engage-K12 online platform offers an immersive learning experience with comprehensive, interactive, and standards-aligned content for STEM and coding lessons along with a plethora of lesson plans tailored for different age groups, subjects, and robots. Besides making it easier to teach programming, RobotLAB is working with 30 different teachers, specialized in different subjects, to create grade-specific courses as a part of their curriculum where students can learn concepts and apply them to virtual and physical robots. For example, for a storytelling curriculum, English teachers can offer their expertise to help RobotLAB create a whole course around storytelling and build different concepts like characterizations, morale, tone, and mood through robotics and its programming. This allows the students to learn coding and programming along with the language and storytelling skills.

he subscription plans for RobotLAB are flexible whereby teachers can opt for either individual teacher subscription or school subscription that allow access to one specific classroom at a time or unlimited teachers, respectively.