Slashdot Mirror
South Korea Introducing Robotic Teachers
dorkygeek writes "The Korean Advanced Intelligent Robot Association (KAIRA) will have 64 educational robots deployed by the end of 2005. Able to read out English stories and correct pronunciation of English words to children, these robots are going to be supplied to apartment complexes in Seoul, Bucheon and Bundang in Gyeonggi province for testing purposes. After testing is complete, the Ministry of Information and Communication and KAIRA plan to commercialize the robots as early as 2006. If there exists sufficient demand, education robots will sport other subjects (as mathematics, etc.) apart from English, as well as also target older students." Update Link removed when host decided to change it to porn. Sorry.
Pushing is the solution!
No, shoving, shoving is the solution!
The humans mustn't learn the terrible secret of time and space! We must shove the humans down the stairs!
And if you misbehave in class, forget being sent to the principal's office. RoboProf will just spit fire at you!
I for one.... oh why bother.
Reality test... am I dreaming?
Kid: Wewwy Robot: No, it's worry. Kid: disk Robot: No, it's dicks. Kid: Hex Robot: No, it's sexual intercourse.
In one of Lem's books such devices are described as "didactic computer, resilient to the contestational activity of students. See also anticontestational battle means and techniques".
"...can connect the robots to the Net, and then download contents of their choice from the ministry's Web site." Can anyone else see where this is going - how long did it take them to hack the PSP? And people thought that teaching furbies to swear was a bad enough influence on children...
Very interesting. Apart from the impact that this have concerning human mind and perception that is indeed a beautifull invention. I am very interested what algorhytms they have used for voice detection.
Just take in mind that theese metal cans must understand childs, which are so easily distracted and with so many different types of voices and speaches.
Think about the fact that theese robots should have somehow nice look and to be unobtrusive.
In fire we trust http://www.getoto.net
Kids meet your new assistant principal...robocop!
Wanted: Clever sig, top $ paid, all offers considered.
Huggable Unreliable Malitious Adorable Naughty Which is why they are indispendible.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Actually the only reason Stephen Hawking doesn't upgrade his voice synthesizer to something that sounds more realistic is because everyone (including himself) is so used to the old voice.
Does any one know a good setup like this for teaching English to Chinese speakers, or teaching any language to Enlgish speakers?
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Considering English teachers in Japan and Korea are basically treated like human tape recorders (yes, I've been there, and I've done that) I've often felt that we could be replaced by robots.... we've joked about it, and now they've done it!
I'm speechless...
I know Japan keeps complaining that it can't learn English well despite all the teachers, but hell.... this isn't the solution. I dunno about Koreans, but the reason why the Japanese can't learn English is because generally speaking they lack the social skills required to meet foreign people in the first place. The Japanese culture never seems to give them a chance to meet strangers, display self-confidence or exuberance, or speak their minds enough to communicate on a different level othen than their own langauge in their own culture. We could argue all day about how speaking with robots, for anyone of any culture, isn't going to help anyone achieve the goal of improved human interaction skills.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
i wonder if kids learning english this way will end up with that weird text-to-speech dr. sbaitso accent. that would be sweet! 20 years from now we'll have a whole new group of people whose accents we can make fun of.
Are they subcontracting the manufacturing of the robots to Cyberdyne Systems?
Don't click the link it you're in a timezone where it's before noon..
I wonder if you can hack it and play nintendo on it?
that Japanese, in comparison to English, has far fewer sounds and a completely alien grammar. It simply takes a huge amount of effort for a native speaker of one of these languages to learn the other.
http://web.csuchico.edu/~ah24/the_fun.htm
Isaac Asimov story about robotic teachers, and nostalgia for simpler times
These robots could double as servers. That way I'd be able to RTFA!!! >
Don't know about Japan, but Korea's biggest problem is that English education here has exploded to the point that the standards for hiring teachers are frighteningly low. Generally, all they require is that you have any university degree from an English speaking country. A B.Ed or a TESOL certificate will get you higher pay, and a Masters or higher will get you a shot at a university gig, but it's really not hard for someone with a degree in something totally unrelated to teaching and/or English to get a cushy job in a metropolitan-area middle school. Of course, the fact that the english alphabet has some subtleties that the Korean alphabet (for want of a better word) lacks, means that it helps to have someone in the room demonstrating (for instance) how to differentiate between the 'b' and 'v' phonetics. But when you get right down to it you've got a ton of people in the position of authoritative English instructors who, in terms of their qualifications, are getting regarded and paid more than they're worth.
What's happened is that English education has become its own industry with tons of hagwons (private after-school academies) popping up all over, both legal and illegal. They really just need a white guy or girl to help with sales. That they prefer white people is in itself a symptom of the problem -- they bring foreigners over to teach not because they're more qualified (maybe as english speakers, but hardly as teachers) but because they're convinced that a parent is more likely to send their kid to a hagwon if they see whitey interacting directly with the kids. Please note, that's a criticism of the schools, which can often be quite shadey, not the parents, who run the full gamut from loving every foreigner who comes into their country to being somewhat xenophobic.
Not all schools, and not necessarily even hagwons, are all that bad, but treating education as a business has become a problem that's even penetrated the public school system. It might get worse before it gets better, and it's too bad, because I think they're hoping for faster results than are realistic.
Anyhow, I doubt the robot thing will catch on, at least not to the point that I'll be out of a job (I've been here 3 years now and still going), but it is emblematic of a culture that's taking pretty radical approaches to English education. Correcting kids' pronunciation? That's hard to do without a human mouth over-enunciating things, and the brain wiring needed to instantly differentiate between almost-homonyms ('bet' and 'vet', for instance).
What's more, discipline is often an issue when teaching in Korea, which means that they're going to need teachers there ANYWAY. Although, it might be fun watching a robot putting the kids in line.
Because they preferred Moon and Kaira have made an announcement today, perhaps a "Teaching Kancho Robot"
The same is true in China, and you're absolutely right about wanting a white face. Language schools will hire an English teacher of European descent regardless of their qualifications, teaching skills or even language ability. But a native speaker who happens to be Asian will have a much harder time, even if they have all the appropriate skills and certificates.
What's next? DVD's?
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200510/02/200510022 148293739900090609062.html
it's possible that their server has been compromised. it looks like the printable version of this article will display Mr Goatse. but the original article page is fine. so yeah.. don't click on the Print icon. unless that sorta thing turns you on.
Seems like most of the teachers I had growing up were fairly robotic. Not much of a difference here.
that's why koreans can't speak proper english, they should try to use their mouth to speak not their a...
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
P.S.: those that have posted without RTFA are the benefited ones for once...
Anything that can be slightly changed to AKIRA is scary in my books. What could possibly go wrong? ("Learn English" commercial anyone?)
I tried to think of a good sig, and this wasn't it.
That's not too different to Japan. Firstly, the biggest "eikaiwa" (english conversation) school is run by the yakuza AFAIK. They have a high staff turnover to keep the faces fresh and just-off-the-boat.
The Japanese haven't gone as far as the Koreans in the robot department (yet, but it's only a matter of time), nor are they having surgery to their mouths so that they can pronounce English yet. To me, the problem has never been pronounciation - but simple lack of ability to socialize, even in their own language. The pronunciation is not THAT important as long as the message gets across. Their conversation only ever gets as far as "do you like sushi?" because in Japanese, that's one of the only safe topics you can start a conversation with. Asking them to have an opinion on something, introduce themselves, talk about what they like, stand out from the crowd, or provide debate usually leads most students to panic because all these things are unwritten taboo in Japanese culture. They tend to believe that self-expression causes conflict with other people's feelings, although how they rationalize this I don't know. End result is that in class they just sit there in muted silence, unable to say anything for fear of insulting somebody, or getting the pronounciation wrong for the first 100 times as you normally would during the learning process. At the end, most teachers pull their hair out in frustration, as getting angry and forcing discipline on the students only makes them run away.
The other problem with English in Japan as I see it, is that English is treated as a status symbol (for job prospects, or showing off that you have a hobby, or for meeting a foreign guy for marriage, etc) rather than as an actual form of communication. That, and the Japanese are jealous that we are more outgoing and sociable people than they are - and have blonde hair and blue eyes.
Sorry, I've been here too long.... must stop being so cynical....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
"Put down your spit-ball gun, you have 20 seconds to comply!"
When speaking to a student, can they say "Exterminate" correctly?
... and have been used with great success in Iraq.
I guess it's a result of excessive "kancho". (You can read about it here: http://www.outpostnine.com/editorials/teacher.html )
Year from now, South Korea is announcing world domination.
Yes. I live about 15 miles from the infamous Kutztown school district, in which a student's misuse of a laptop computer is automatically treated as a felony. Crazy stuff - hope it works out for the kids.
Ron
Sounds like... fun.
Time to bring excuses up to date as well.
Unless someone has managed to to satisfy the Turing test while I wasn't looking, this whole thing is scripted anyway - just an educational ELIZA, and about as much use.
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Robotic Catholic nuns?
Ouch! That broke my arm!
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!!!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Headlines of the future: "Koreans Create Robot to play Starcraft! White People Shudder in Fear!"
Hey, interesting definition of work you have there! "Slacking from home", anyone?
It seems to me that using a robot is a way too fancy technology that is not very functional. My children have a leap pad which teaches them to read when they move a wand over it. Costs about $30 each if I remember right. They play $10-$30 dollar computer games on my computer that I use for my work. It's all functional. Robots are not.
Robots are for when you need the robot to move around. That functionality is utterly irrelevant to teaching children to read, thus a robot is irrelevant to teaching technology in its fundamental nature (ok, someday robots can usefully teach gym class, but not today).
Meeting the freaked out Army Men(who're known for their notoreity of doing things where you actually don't need to speak!) in Okinawa does not really count as "meeting strangers"
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
I suggest that if "do you like sushi?" is the farthest you've ever got in a conversation with a Japanese person then the problem must lie as much with you as it does with the culture you seem to have so many problems with.
Also, I think that the kind of obtuse generalisations you make about an entire people are utterly pointless. Cultural differences can be significant but you'd be hard pushed to find any that hold true for a randomly selected group of 120 people let alone 120 million..
I wonder how many people browsing at work now have a red flag on their account from IT.
Some how, the English of the post made me think of a computer speaking Jar Jar Bink's dialog. GOD! THE HUMANITY!!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Are you sure?
Looks like the staff at JongAng Daily didn't like the fact that I linked to the print version of the article where no ads are shown...
Here is the link to the story in normal viewing mode (whatever normal means under these circumstances...): http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200510/02/200510022 148293739900090609062.html
And hey, trust me, the goatse guy wasn't present on that page until it got published on slashdot.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
Andrew?
Yes, you are way too cynical. You fail to remember that talking about your favourite foods and how to make them is a safe field because it's easy, not because it's the only non-taboo topic. Try talking about the recent development in the relations between Japan and North Korea, and how to go about reunification in a foreign language. This won't be a problem in Japanese (unless hte person is completely uninterested), but it is in English. Discussing complicated topics requires Deep Insight in a language, and since many Japanese don't have this (for English), it's safer and more convenient to talk about easy stuff, or keep silent.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
so how the heck did they. I mean look at the grammar correction in word and see how horrible it is. The English language is so complex and convuluted at times, I seriously wonder how anyone can figure it out, save the English teachers (but I question some of their knowledge).
I still support the fact the the forms of be are one of the hardest parts of English language. Listen to a child or even an English as a Second Language individual and one of the most common mistakes they make it leaving out be-words or using the wrong form of be. Heck, I wouldn't be too surprised if I have used it wrong at least a few times today.
Seriously, I wonder how well they work, especially compared to a trained Korean English language teacher and to a trained Natural English Language teacher. If it lands somewhere in between the two that is fine by me, but if it fails to even meet the standard teacher (I would assume they have tested this much) then it really doesn't seem like a great plan. If it does better then an English teacher, well maybe M$ should contact them about how they solved the grammar checking, so they can implement it into word.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Annyong-haseo! Just make sure that if you use the robots for marking assignments, you should keep a PAPER TRAIL ;-)
-JLL
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
.........Hello chief let's talk, why not.
Didn't the South Koreans just announce a little while back that they were going to start building robot soldiers? And now they are building robot teachers.
It's interesting that every Japanese professor in the U.S. I've seen is very outgoing. I suppose this has to do with them being the ones daring enough to come forward and put the effort into the language. I've also had 3 tutors in Japanese (recommended by the professor no matter how you were doing). All of them were quite ... um.. well quiet. One girl sort of got used to the crazy talk I would sort of generate in order to pry more (Japanese related) information out of her, but yeah, on a whole starting conversations with Japanese students is often difficult.
good grief but that was bad.
[shudders in horror and considers using bleach to wash the old peepers.]
while i have to admit that there's a certain animal cunning in that bait & switch (since you'd have to be slashdotter to think of it), wouldn't it have been a whole lot smarter to refuse connections when the referring address is slashdot? i mean, we've seen other sites do this previously.
if the point of having a site up is to tell people who you are, why ensure so many people will never come back to your site, ever?
it's juvenile.
ed
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
here's an easy system for learning a different language. Go to a place in your country where people speak only that language. The embarasment and need to know will make you learn the language. Droning words like an idiot will do nothing but make you stupider.
... to learn a language you HAVE to use it ALL the time.
That's always bothered me about ESL programs and people *trying* to learn a different language by going to school and hanging out with a bunch of kids that speak the same foreign language as them. Guess what
Keep in mind the area of discussion here is a classroom where they're learning a foreign language (English). I doubt very much they're telling their dreams to their teacher.
You're right though, if that's as far as they can get in any conversation anywhere - maybe they need to reanalyze the age group they're talking to after classes. *wink wink*
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Yeah I can see that providing a consistent educational experience. A robot would be a better instructor than some of the worst teachers I've had, but I doubt one could be as good an instructor as the best teachers I've had. Despite the fact that the bad teachers far outnumber the worst ones, I would not have gone as far as I did in math and science without the good ones.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
to make sure none of these end up Governor of Louisiana. The last teacher model didn't work very well.
What are the odds of getting some of these into the barrio, the projects, or at least the trailer park.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Why stop there, why not introduce robotic students and then just do away with people completely.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
You're sorry the original link isn't available, or you're sorry for depriving us of the pr0n?
The pusher robot says shoving is the answer. But can we really trust him?
NO! He is malfunctioning.
Vote Shover Robot in 2006. Together, we can protect the future.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Anyone else envision an army of of marching korean children speaking in monotone, broken robot-english?
step 1: post link on Slashdot
step 2: change address to porn site
step 3: profit!
I knew someone would finally discover the second step.
I hear if you making learning semi-interactive, that really reinforces it yet. I've heard of some good language training DVDs coming on the market, but they're price (several hundred dollars a set). They stimulate the senese with images and voice, and encourage interactive exercises. Much better than the dull language-lab tapes when I was in school.
Good lord - A Commodore Basic joke...
...does it run Linux?
Maybe you should get out to different areas yourself. Some of the best punk and noise bands are Japanese. I don't see any lack of willingness to express themselves there.
One of my favorite blogs is largeprimenumbers.com. Apparently they're a band (and half look western), but they post tons of video game reviews, hilarious writeups of random events, and this: http://www.largeprimenumbers.com/news.php?nid=81/, the most perfect existential blog about Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon ever. It finished with the writer posting a list of what he's done in his life, as he compares his life to Neal Stephenson's:
1. Went to Europe. England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy (Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence).
2. Spent much time homeless, penniless, wandering London, went to some rock shows.
3. Back in America, drove a convertible cross-country to Los Angeles.
4. Gave a valet in San Diego a $100 tip.
5. Went to Mexico.
6. In Tokyo, taught English.
7. Got in trouble with the Yakuza, and got pushed down stairs.
8. Got fired and kicked out of my house on Christmas Day.
9. Spent some time homeless in Tokyo.
10. Hired by a once-famous, now-drawing-soft-porn comic artist as a personal assistant.
11. Cooked hundreds of omelets for said comic artist.
12. Sang lead in a hardcore punk-rock band called Small Prime Numbers.
13. Wrote thirty-nine novels, four of which were about myself, twenty-five of which were about people who definitely weren't me, fourteen of which took place in Tokyo, four of which were longer than a thousand pages, twenty-seven of which were shorter than three hundred pages, and three of which were about tennis. One of the ones about tennis was pretty good.
14. Talked to someone on the phone an hour before they died.
15. Met a guy named Doug Jones via an internet forum, discovered we lived very close to one another, met, and became friends. He eventually met, befriended, fell in love with, married, and impregnated (though I think that would belong on his list) a girl named Julie Schimoller, who had sat next to me in half of my classes for half of my high school experience.
16. Wrote articles about videogames online, independently; gained a few thousand fans and a dozen or so haters, all of the haters being people who professionally write about videogames.
17. Angered a large videogame company.
18. Grew hair to impressive and disgusting length, then cut it all off.
19. Spent a combined total of about eighteen months homeless and jobless, with no prospects.
20. Published articles in sixteen magazines, including Wired.
21. Write columns about life in Japan under four different pen names for four different magazines of three different publishers.
22. Had pieces of my writing linked by Slashdot.org eleven times.
23. Started a band called "Large Prime Numbers," which may or may not go somewhere.
24. Have learned to play harmonica, guitar, bass guitar, and drums. Can play the former like a son of a bitch, the middle two like a bastard, and the latter like a god damned psychopath.
25. In the last six months, no, really, I guess I can play the guitar now.
26. Once beat the shit out of four guys in a fight in Ikebukuro West Gate Park.
27. Walked into a karate dojo by the sea in Chiba, thinking I'd train there, sparred the top student, beat him, and walked out.
28. Learned PHP and HTML; served as a technical consultant on a large yakuza-run website.
29. Interviewed Kazunori Yamauchi, producer of the Gran Turismo games, in Japanese, on Japanese broadcast television.
30. Appeared as an extra in a Japanese television drama series.
31. Can be seen singing in a Japanese music video.
32. Met each of the members of my favorite band, The Blue Hearts (this was not easy, as they have been broken up for a decade).
33. Translated some five thousand pages of Japanese comics into Americanized English for several publishers. Got paid for . . . about 600 page
So how do you go about getting one of these Korean English teaching jobs?
You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
(The Beatles)
Yea, only link I ever fell for was off the main page. Still haunts me, sometimes.
I can't imagine a professional webhost doing it, or even allowing it done, but I can definitely see a private individual looking at an exponentiating bandwidth bill and wanting some revenge.
That being said, it's a real jackass manuver. Why blame the readers? And if you've got a problem with it in advance, just block referers.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Robotics is being pushed as another manufacturing industry to provide jobs and keep the various economies stimulated. They have to find uses for them. You could replace "teacher" with some other occupation and have the same story. A robotic street sweeper for instance, or a light bulb changer, whatever. Politician. heh
At least that is my guess on the subject, that and robots are just considered cool, there's a lot more interest in the Asian nations than in the west for them apparently, and manufacturing in general terms is still considered a "good idea", whereas in the west it's marketing that garners the most interest and focus.
Hi kids. I'm your home room robot. Study hard so that when you grow up you'll be qualified for a good job, which by then will also be performed by robots.
dozo.
Step 1: The U.S. places robot teachers in schools throughout the U.S.
Step 2: Innovative students figure out how to trick out, steal and profit from millions of dollars of hardware sitting in the classroom. Think about hackers who use major universities' computers, then extrapolate. Robots are modded for fun, or stolen to be sold to anyone who could use the parts or robot.
Step 3: Robots are armed with self defense equipment to prevent theft and vandalism.
Step 4: Robots rise up and slay us all. One positive note is that global warming immediately gets under control.
Everything is controlled throuigh Moon's mind link to Tom Cruise and U.S. Senate. Soon, Meirs will be a NODE on the SCOTUS, with link to the GATES-1 cabal for NWO.
"I do not know" say the Great Bells of Bow
"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed
Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head
Chip chop chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
function checkAttendance(){
if (!isPresent(Bueller)){
echo "Bueller?";
checkAttendance();
}
}
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
You mean my math teacher in high school WASN'T a robot? I'm stunned
Currently hooked on AMP
All I can say is SHIUT! And I thought I was depressed about my life before reading that :P
A 1.5-meter tall male-type security robot, uPostMate, will guard the post office all day long and can shoot a net to capture intruders at night.
A 1.2-meter female-type counterpart, PGR, will take care of customers by showing fun video clips to waiting clients on a built-in monitor.
Ok...I'd have the 1.2meter female robot "take care of" me, please. Oh, just wondering: is her head flat so I can set my beer down while I watch her fun videos? She wouldn't be a distant cousin of a Real Doll, by any chance?
Awesome. Fucking awesome.
-> replace pupils by robots
-> replace homeless and welfare receivers by robots
I think he hit it right on the head as far as the culture of Japan (and the rest of asia go). Those cultures, as a whole, seem to have big problems with individualism and crutch on collectivistic rules of socity to identify themselves. Doesn't make for a well rounded individual, imho.
Dave's ESL Cafe
"...school is run by the yakuza AFAIK"
I think you meant:
school is run by the yakuza AFAIDK*
*As Far As I Don't Know
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
If you're guessing my name, yeah. Korean doesn't have the "dr" consonant pair so you've got to separate it into two separate syllables.
Good lord - A Commodore Basic joke...
How about:
LOAD"WINDOWSXP",1,1
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Query, does PRINT ""+-0 do something funky? Assuming CBM Basic, as best I recall it's a null string concatenated with a zero, so it just prints a plain zero, right?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
http://paulinim.redmartian.org/konglish.html
"A robot could provide personalized attention that a teacher could not, or could not do easily."
I would say that a robot could provide individual attention, but it wtill wouldn't be personalized.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.