Telepresence robots are helping sick kids like Odinn Meehan beam into school
Odinn Meehan was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease and is too sick to regularly attend school but new robot technology – Odinn 2.0 – has allowed him to be back in class.
READING LEVEL: GREEN
Odinn Meehan was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease after a bout of Covid last year. He is too sick to regularly attend school but new robot technology – Odinn 2.0 – has allowed him to be back in class.
Pop into the aptly* named Class 3D at Rainworth State School in Queensland and it looks like any other bright and engaging classroom: colourful drawings, motivational quotes, keen little faces.
Today the children are learning persuasive* writing and their teacher, Katrina Hammond, is asking them to read the adopt-a-pet section of a mock* newspaper.
Ms Hammond places a copy of the paper on a corner desk at the back and suggests eight-year-old Odinn Meehan moves from the front of the class to the desk to have a read. So off he goes. Or, more accurately, off rolls Odinn 2.0.
Odinn has a rare arthritic*-like auto-immune disease*, called juvenile dermatomyositis* or JDM. Going to school is fraught* at the moment. But not with the help of his classroom proxy*, Odinn 2.0, a telepresence* robot, sporting wheels at the bottom, a skinny pole with a midriff* bump for a body and a tablet-like screen as its head.
Beaming out from that screen is Odinn’s happy face. He’s at home in Bardon, in Brisbane’s inner west, dressed proudly in his school uniform.
Using his laptop controls, he turns the robot and with the wide camera view of Odinn 2.0 as his guide, negotiates* it through the space between his classmates’ desks.
Some of Odinn’s friends wave as the robot passes by, then, as if a robot in their midst is as natural as breathing, these tech-savvy kids get back to reading.
Odinn 2.0 makes it to the desk and Odinn presses buttons to lower the tablet, like a head on a hinge, to look at the work. As if he was right there in the classroom.
Odinn hasn’t been able to go to school since March last year when he started to show the symptoms of JDM and has had to have lots of tests, treatments and stays in hospital. The medication he takes turns down his immune system* so he is also at risk of getting infections.
Being away from his school and his mates was getting him down.
“Odinn’s default setting is joy, he’s a happy kid, a very optimistic kid and he loves school,” his mother, Romy Willing, said.
“For a very social and empathetic* child, to lose that connection with his friends, I could see that after a time there was a shadow that came over him. He was lonely.”
Odinn was getting work sheets from his school and staff at Queensland Children’s Hospital guided him through lessons when he was receiving treatment. He was learning but it wasn’t the same.
That’s where the not-for-profit MissingSchool initiative came in.
Ms Willing and her husband, Damien Meehan, had not heard of the innovative program until a teacher at the hospital school mentioned it.
“We talked about the fact that Odinn wasn’t in hospital for big enough chunks for him to be regularly at the hospital school but he wasn’t able to go back to school, so he was sort of in this in between space,” Ms Willing said. “And that’s where MissingSchool is amazing.”
MissingSchool began 11 years ago, when three determined mothers were looking for solutions for their own seriously ill children.
Since 2017, MissingSchool has been rolling out telepresence robots to schools across Australia, connecting seriously ill kids with their normal classroom. It now has more than 180 robots in schools nationally, reconnecting about 5400 classmates.
It has also received a federal grant and private sector funding worth $800,000 for a pilot program called Seen&Heard to help schools use the technology they already have to connect with seriously ill students at home.
GLOSSARY
- aptly: in a way that is suitable or appropriate in the circumstances
- persuasive: the way to get people to agree with an idea, attitude, or action by rational and emotional means
- mock: not authentic or real, but without the intention to deceive
- arthritic: a disease that causes swelling, stiffness, and pain in a person’s joints
- auto-immune disease: occurs when the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks its own organs and tissues
- juvenile dermatomyositis: a disease in children that causes skin rash (dermato) and muscle inflammation (myositis)
- fraught: filled with something — often something bad
- proxy: a person or thing that is acting or being used in the place of someone or something else
- telepresence: technology that enables a person to perform actions in a distant or virtual location as if physically present in that location
- midriff: the middle region of the human body
- negotiates: to get over or around something
- immune system: he body system that helps fight off sickness
- empathetic: the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation
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QUICK QUIZ
- What is the name of Odinn Meehan’s school and class?
- How does he participate in classes?
- Describe Odinn’s telepresence robot.
- Why is it too risky for Odinn to attend class in person?
- How many telepresence robots are currently helping about 5400 classmates stay connected in Australia?
LISTEN TO THIS STORY
CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES
Robot Presence
This is amazing technology to allow sick children to feel part of a classroom environment.
What other ways or instances might technology like this robot be used in schools?
What other educational opportunities might it open up to be in one place, but in the environment of another, controlled by you?
There are approximately 180 telepresence robots around Australia, do you think there is a need for more to help reconnect seriously ill children or those who can’t attend school?
Explain your answer.
Time: allow 20 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Digital Technologies, Personal and social, Critical and creative thinking
2. Extension
The MissingSchool charity “has also received a federal grant and private sector funding worth $800,000 for a pilot program called Seen&Heard to help schools use the technology they already have to connect with seriously ill students at home”.
Work with a partner and come up with some ideas of how to use technology already at your school to connect with sick students stuck at home or in hospital. List your ideas below.
Time: allow 25 minutes to complete this activity
Curriculum Links: English, Digital technologies, Personal and social, Critical and creative thinking
VCOP ACTIVITY
MissingSchool Initiative
Have you heard of the MissingSchool Initiative before? How do you think it would feel being stuck at home, missing school because you were sick, or at risk of getting worse by attending school? I would feel miserable.
Create an advertising campaign for the MissingSchool Initiative to help raise awareness. It can be a radio ad, and you will need to write a script; it could be a poster, and you will need shorter, sharper text as well as artwork; or maybe it’s a TV advertisement, and you will need a script as well as visuals.
When you have finished, present your campaign to the class or to a family member to help spread your message.
Remember to practice reading or presenting your campaign out loud to ensure it is clear and gets the right message across so everyone will listen. Take on feedback from your class or family about anything you can do to enhance the campaign even further.