admin Hiroshima’s Education Board has pioneered the use of a robot that is allowing hospitalized students to take classes remotely without being monitored by teachers.
A 23-centimeter-tall robot called Orihime, under the board’s initiative and jointly developed with Hiroshima University Hospital is placed in a classroom to act as a mediator for an ill student in the hospital. The robot enables students to take part in classes in real-time by recording and broadcasting the content of each class for hospitalized students to watch on their tablets.
Students can also speak to their teaches or classmates through the robot and can command it to move and make a variety of gestures, such as turning its head sideways and waving.
Three students, according to Hiroshima University Hospital, have so far used the system to attend classes remotely and the feedback has largely been positive, with the students being connected to their classmates.
The Japanese education ministry had long opinioned that in order to qualify for attending high school students who take classes remotely must be physically accompanied by a teacher; however, Hiroshima Prefecture’s education board concluded that the virtual classroom system made possible by Orihime is enough to fulfill students’ attendance requirements even without them being monitored by a teacher in the same physical space.
With this, the education board under its jurisdiction on Nov. 20 instructed schools to acknowledge the attendance of hospitalized students who use Orihime on condition that their progress will be checked by their doctors and parents from time to time.
An education board official said, “We believe we were able to lay the groundwork for an environment where students can study with less to worry about.”
The system is only made available for pupils at Hiroshima University Hospital at the moment as close communication between schools and doctors — as well as the establishment of stable internet access — are deemed integral to its smooth operation. The Hiroshima education board’s successful use of Orihime ultimately triggered a policy shift that the ministry said it had long mulled.
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