“What result did you find, Melvin?”: Melvin, 8 years old, immobilized at home due to cancer, participates in a course thanks to Buddy, a small robot installed in the front row of his CE2 class, on the outskirts from Lyon.
In immaculate white, Buddy looks like a 60 cm tall man topped by a head fitted with a screen showing the blond boy with glasses, operated on for a malignant brain stem tumor last summer.
“I believe in class”
Deprived of the use of his right arm, fragile left leg and tired by the disease and the many treatments he has to undergo, Melvin connects an average of three times a week with his peers at the Paul Chevallier school in Rillieux-the-Pope. .
Buddy is not the only one, there are also Beam and Edmo: in total some 4,000 robots are deployed throughout the country as part of the TED-i program (Working together remotely and interacting) launched in 2020 by the Ministry of Education.
The objective: to allow each student hospitalized or permanently confined to their home due to illness to have a free robotic telepresence system. In addition to the continuity of schooling, the idea is that Melvin “feels like everyone else, that he is part of the class,” explains his teacher Fanny Joubert.
“See us and listen to us”
The 35-year-old schoolteacher adopted the device in November to allow the student to reconnect with his peers, who worried they didn’t see him return at the start of the school year.
The schedule is adapted, the interaction is done in small sessions with exercises and reviews. Sometimes also with a more informal exchange time with their comrades.
“Press the arrow Melvin! Again!”. This morning, the boy has difficulty moving the little robot’s head, which remains too low. Everything is fixed thanks to the teacher’s instructions and the lesson can be resumed.
“Getting started was a bit tricky, but it’s quite easy and intuitive. We didn’t use all the features: Melvin could, for example, make the robot move, but it’s still complicated for his age,” explains the professor.
“Morality is important”
At the end of the lesson, Mrs. Joubert returns the robot to the class: “Bye-bye Melvin!” the 27 students chorus, before dispersing in a funny mess.
Currently on paternity leave to care for his son, this 42-year-old building employee praised the device to cross-parents at the rehab center. “It’s important to maintain this link,” he says.
At the Lyon academy, 23 robots help primary and secondary students.
The tool, the granting of which requires the approval of a doctor, “makes it possible to break the isolation of these students, to bring them a breath of fresh air in the daily life hit by illness or accident”, greets Olivier Dugrip, rector. from the academic region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes.
According to him, the deployment is destined to continue thanks to a provision of 170 kits at the academy.
Source: BFM TV
