i am a musical robot

so my lesson plan this week is about robots. (which is boring, i guess, because one of my best students told me after class today she wanted to do something interesting.) i asked them if they had a robot, what would they want it to do. the answers were very telling.

first we had the violent robots. these robots were to kill people my students didn't like, burn down the school, rob banks. one student wanted their robot to kill gwb, then make the student delicious food. an interesting diaspora there.

the next are the lonelibots. these are designed to be friends, keep secrets (that's a must), and play tennis, soccer, and computer games with the students. i tried to make the point that when they played computer games against enemies not controlled by humans, they already were playing with a robot, but for some reason that didn't fly with my eighth graders. one better student wanted to liberate her robot from mundane tasks, and for it to have emotions. "it would be just like a human, but its brain would be simpler."

studybots were the most prevalent. all the students wanted a robot that would do their homework, take their tests, etc. the most creative answer thus far is a shape shifting robot that could take tests for a student as well as taking the place of the parents when there were parent/teacher conferences.

finally, there were parental units. many of my kids wanted robots who would teach them about the world, go to work and give them pocket money, do the housework, and one girl went so far to want it to keep her on task. she mentioned that her parents were always at work, and she often watched television or played computer games when she should have been doing her homework. she thought a robot could solve her problem. another said she wanted a robot to do house work because her grandmother spent too much time cleaning and the student wanted her to have time to "play with other old people."

and finally, a few girls wanted a robot to play piano with them. god love those people and their musical robots.

(if you don't know what i'm talking about, rent spellbound. it's great.)