PEBBLES, a new assistive technology, is revolutionizing the educational and emotional experiences of hospitalized and/or homebound children.
PEBBLES unites medically fragile children, hospitalized for protracted periods, with their regular school site. It uses a video-conferencing system to provide a telepresence.
A PEBBLES system consist of two child-sized robots capable of transmitting video, audio and documents to each other. Teachers and fellow students come to react to the school unit as if it were the hospitalized child.
Kudos to Telbotics, the company conducting this development project. This project reminds me of the autonomous wheelchair Loren and built at Arizona State University for a boy with cerebral palsy. Aren’t inventors great!
I’m overwhelmed sometimes with the potential of what more we can each do with a Tablet PC and Ultra Mobile PCs than with desktops of two decades ago.
Kudos!I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment of this post. We, as a society should be doing everything in our power to enhance the education not only for the “haves” but the “have nots” as well.