The educational use of home robots for children

Korea, with the world´s top class infrastructure in IT, has entered in full scale, the experimental phase of e-learning, and speedily extended to even m-learning. Backed by its IT environment and advances in robot technology, Korea developed the world´s first available e-learning home robot and demonstrated the prospect of robots as a new educational media. This study compared the effects of traditional media-assisted learning and Web-based instruction(WBI), with the effects of home robot-assisted learning, which automatically updates e-contents and software through wireless network. The results showed that children felt a home robot was friendlier than other media assisted learning programs. Compared to other learning programs, the home robot was superior in promoting and improving students concentration, interest, and academic achievement.