For many students, math isn’t as fun as Pokemon Go. And texting is easier than writing.

But try telling that to the average elementary school student. Many minimize their communication to 140 characters on Twitter. Asking them to write an essay with a beginning, middle and end is becoming an increasingly difficult task.

However, when these students are introduced to a robot that they can program to be a story teller, student engagement increases. San Francisco-based RobotLAB has been using robots for years to increase student engagement and help them learning core subjects, including reading, writing, math, programming, and computational thinking. Using these advanced robots, they make abstract math and computer science real, by focusing lessons around complex problems which become intuitive through interaction and manipulation of the robots.

Elad Inbar, CEO of RobotLAB, recently joined The Robotics Trends Show to discuss why robots and new curriculum developed for grades K-12 is improve student engagement in core subjects like reading writing and math.

Watch the videos at the bottom of this page to see RobotLAB’s program at work. On the podcast, Elad and I discuss why the NAO robot is so engaging, examples of lessons that incorporate robotics, whether teachers are embracing robots in the classroom, and why teachers shouldn’t worry about robot stealing their jobs.

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