Japan has robots in the classroom!?

Foremost, I would like an interactive educational robot for my classroom. Yes! Where do I sign up? Second, reading this short article made me think of something I am learning in my Sociological and Philosophical Foundations of Education course. Paulo Freire wrote an extremely wordy and academic article that can be (overly) summarized by stating that teaching is often mistakenly thought of as a linear transfer of knowledge from instructor to student. In contrast, effective teaching happens when the learning environment is something shared by the students and the instructor. An instructor should give students as many opportunities to contribute to the learning as possible. That was the theory, and the robot put it into practice.