C-M welcomes Milo the Robot for autism support
Members of the Canon-McMillan staff and school board, representatives from Range Resources and Jeffrey’s Drug Store and students gather for a check presentation to fund Milo and associated curriculum in December.
Milo the robot stands for a photo in December with South Central principal Michelle Tomicek and students.
So, who is Milo the Robot, and how does it help students with autism? Milo is a robot that was designed to help learners with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, learn and practice their communication and social skills.
Milo can walk, talk, model human facial expressions and more. It delivers consistent lessons in a way that many of the students respond well to, and can repeat lessons as many times as needed.
Milo can even do some fun things like dance, act like it’s swinging a baseball bat and tell the audience to stand up. It has a touchscreen on the chest that allows the students to control it or see their face as they’re watching it. The teacher and students use an iPad to facilitate the process while Milo delivers the instruction.
Milo was first introduced to the district by Grace Lani, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, who saw the device at a technology conference she attended last year.
Lani and Director of Special Education, Becky Lieb, wanted to learn more about Milo and how it could help students, so they scheduled a meeting with RoboKind to learn more about Robots4Autism. According to the website, the organization “utilizes cutting edge facially expressive robots and tablet technology to deliver a curriculum addressing relevant social skills for school-aged children with autism.”
Robots4Autism’s comprehensive intervention program “uses purpose-built humanoid robots to deliver developmental instruction modules that teach critical functional skills.”
Lani and Lieb quickly realized that they wanted Milo to join their district, so they reached out to the Canon-McMillan Horizon Foundation to see if they could help with finding donors to help cover the expenses related to obtaining Milo and the associated curriculum. Amy D’Amico, president of the Canon-McMillan Horizon Foundation, and Kathy Berry, vice president, quickly found donors that were excited about this opportunity for the students and wanted to donate funds so the district could acquire Milo and the curriculum. Thanks to Range Resources and Jeffrey’s Drug Store and their generous donations, the district was able to obtain Milo and two years of the associated curriculum.
“We’re beyond excited to have welcomed Milo into our schools,” Lieb said.
“We’ve begun to utilize him to service our students in our Autistic Support and Life Skills Support classes at South Central Elementary School. Our Speech and Language Pathologist currently facilitates the instruction one-on-one with our students. The goal is to educate the other staff so they can work with the students as well to increase the frequency with which they get to interact with Milo, thus hoping to provide more consistent instruction and achieve quicker results. We hope to obtain additional robots to be able to reach our students in our Autistic Support and Life Skills Support programs in all of our buildings and at all grade levels. We eagerly anticipate the short- and long-term results that we foresee our students will achieve through this cutting-edge technology.”