Salamanca School District Makes Waves By Introducing “Humanoid Robot” Teacher

Things will look a little different for some kids at Salamanca City School District this fall when they return to the classroom. For instance, some of them will have a "humanoid robot" teacher there with them.

Salamanca City School District will have a robot named "Sally" in their classrooms

As part of a pilot program, Salamanca City School District is partnering with Realbotix Corporation to launch a state-of-the-art program. They will be bringing an advanced robot and digital avatar to support learning. She will not be walking around the classroom but she will look like a human and is there to assist the teacher in the classroom.

The robot will be named Sally and she will start first with a small group of high school students who are enrolled in Woz Ed STEAM courses. She will not address the students by name to ensure privacy requirements are met. Instead, the students will all be referred to by numbers.

They claim that the robot is designed to help encourage learning and present information in a variety of ways. Unlike AI tools that just provide answers, the robots are loaded with the district's curriculum and instructional strategies.

Are the robots going to replace teachers?

For now, they insist that they will never replace human to human interaction or any personnel in the district. According to a post on their facebook page, the goal is to support learning, not replace people.

They also say that it is not like ChatGPT, Gemini, or Llama in the sense that it does NOT use AI data centers that present environmental concerns.

If the pilot program is successful, they hope to expand the robot to be used by other students.