With the rise in children's mental health cases, a little robot caled AV1 is proving to be a steppingstone to getting troubled students back into the classroom .
Staff are also beginning to look at it as an alternative to Zoom and MS Teams for blended learning.
The TES Award 2020: Best Use of Technology went to Hospital and Outreach Education AP Academy in Northamptonshire. Led by headteacher Cath Kitchen. They have been using AV1, the little robot, as a communication channel between children in a hospital bed or isolated at home and their friends in school.
TeachingTimes featured the technology in an earlier article and showed how it was being used to maintain continuity of education for children undergoing long-term medical treatment.
How it started
AV1 was launched by Norwegian company No Isolation in 2016 in Oslo and brought together a team of hardware and software developers, plus user experience experts.
They created the prototypes using 3-D printers and cardboard and tested everything on children, families and teachers. This is perhaps one reason why there are so many thoughtful features.