Improving Environmental Literacy with Pepper
Ready to Teach!
Joe (right) and I (left) about to teach with Pepper in our trial class.
Giving the lesson with Pepper
Jacob (right), Joe (left of Pepper), and I (far left) shown giving our lesson to a class of fourth graders.
Working with pepper
Pepper shown staring at a fan, which was one of the many funny issues we had to deal with.
Starting as a school project during my junior year of high school, two classmates and I had the opportunity to work with SERC's (Smithsonian Environmental Research Center) Pepper robots. The first part of the project lasted from the start of April to the end of the school year to fulfill the requirements of the class. At that time, my team and I were able to create a basic lesson plan with Pepper, using the technology of the robot to go around to classrooms and teach environmental-based lessons. By the end of the school year, we successfully taught two classes at Central Elementrary school in Edgewater.
My group and I were then given the opportunity to intern at SERC's office for the summer to continue working on our project. During this time, my group and I started working to get Pepper ready for something called SERC Science Saturdays, which was a weekly event where the community was invited to join in on enviornmental activities. Before our group started working on Pepper, there was another Pepper there that was meant to be an easy to use and set up robot. The goal for the summer was to create a better version of Pepper that provided more environmental activities and was still easy to use for the volunteers.
My group and I were then given the opportunity to intern at SERC's office for the summer to continue working on our project. During this time, my group and I started working to get Pepper ready for something called SERC Science Saturdays, which was a weekly event where the community was invited to join in on enviornmental activities. Before our group started working on Pepper, there was another Pepper there that was meant to be an easy to use and set up robot. The goal for the summer was to create a better version of Pepper that provided more environmental activities and was still easy to use for the volunteers.
By the end of the summer, we were able to give Pepper a range of activities that were interactive for the kids that would use Pepper and were intuitive for the volunteers to set up and help the kids use. These including the original activities found on Pepper, along with interactive games. We were able to test out our pepper for the first time in August for one of SERC's SERC science Saturdays and it seemed to go really well with the kids. We also were able to test out Pepper at my Taekwondo school and show the kids features of the robot like her dancing, animation feature, and the environmental games we made for Pepper.
Although alot of work was put into Pepper, there was still alot left to do. We had left messages for the possible next group for how Pepper was set up and suggestions on what they could do to improve Pepper. Sadly however, the Smithsonian had lost the contract with Softbanks and had to return all of the Pepper robots. As unfortunate as it is that our work will go unused now, my group and I had an amazing experience working on Pepper and has improved my development skills and understanding of systems.