“I believe in class”: Thanks to the robot Buddy, little Melvin with cancer can still go to school
Immaculately white, Buddy looks like a 60 cm tall man surmounted by a head provided with a screen where appears the blond boy with glasses, operated on for a malignant tumor of the brainstem last summer.
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 on average three times a week with his comrades from the Paul Chevallier school in Rillieux. -the-Pope.
“When I’m with Buddy I feel good, I think I’m in class even if I miss playing games and going to the canteen with my friends and girlfriends”he confides to AFP, after a distance math course followed in interaction with the teacher and the other students via a tablet.
Buddy is not unique, there are also Beam and Edmo: in total some 4,000 robots are deployed across the country as part of the TED-i program (Working together remotely and in interaction) launched in 2020 by the Ministry of l ‘Education.
The objective: to allow each student hospitalized or kept permanently at home due to an illness to have a free robotic tele-presence system.
Teacher Fanny Joubert holds Buddy, a robot thanks to which Melvin can attend his CE2 class at the Paul Chevallier school in Rillieux-La-Pape, near Lyon, on March 3, 2023AFP / OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE.
Besides the continuity of schooling, the idea is that Melvin “feels like everyone else, that he is part of the class”explains his mistress Fanny Joubert.
This 35-year-old school teacher adopted the device in November to allow the student to reconnect with his classmates, worried about not having seen him return at the start of the school year.
“It happens very easily and naturally. Melvin calls, his dad is there to help him in case. And we can see and hear each other”continues the teacher, who also finds the little convalescent every Tuesday for home lessons.
The schedule is adapted, the interaction is done in small sessions with exercises and revisions. Sometimes also with a more informal exchange time with his comrades.
Sortir de sa “bulle”
“Press the arrow Melvin! Again!”. This morning, the child is having difficulty moving the little robot’s head, which remains too low. Everything is arranged thanks to the teacher’s instructions and the lesson can resume.
“Getting started was a little tricky but it’s quite easy and intuitive. We don’t use all the features: Melvin could, for example, make the robot move, but it’s still complicated for his age”explains the teacher.
At the end of the lesson, Mrs. Joubert returns the robot to the class: “Goodbye Melvin!”, launch in chorus the 27 students, before dispersing in a nice disorder.
Melvin interacts with a schoolgirl in his CE2 class thanks to the robot Buddy, in Rillieux-La-Pape, near Lyon, March 3, 2023AFP/Archives / OLIVIER CHASSIGNOLE.
“In all illnesses, morale is important, and there it brings him a lot. The fact of not being locked in a bubble between home and the hospital motivates him”testifies the father of Melvin, Alexandre Langlois.
Currently on parental leave to take care of his son, this 42-year-old employee in the building praised the device to the parents crossed in the rehabilitation center. “It’s important to keep this link,” he says.
In the Lyon academy, 23 robots assist primary and secondary school 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 their daily lives hit by illness or an accident”salutes Olivier Dugrip, rector of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes academic region.
According to him, the deployment is destined to continue thanks to an endowment of 170 kits in the academy.