Collaborative learning strategies employed by effective teachers have gone a long way to keep students engaged in the classroom. Veteran teachers know by experience that students learn best by teaching others, and peer to peer instruction is now ubiquitous in most STEM classrooms.  The effectiveness of these teaching methods are well documented, but a new study from Japan takes a slightly different path: using robots as teachers who routinely make mistakes. It seems that children are far more engaged when they can pick out and correct errors made by a robot that is attempting to teach them vocabulary words. You can imagine the benefits here: students feel they are playing a useful role in the ‘education’ of the teacher, and most likely enjoy knowing more than the teacher so are happy to point out mistakes. These may be partly selfish reasons to stay engaged, but in your classroom every students wants to feel that they are able to be helpful as a resource to someone else. Do you know any teachers who refuse to admit when they make a mistake that is pointed out by a student? A quality teacher turns this around and makes it a learning opportunity, and shows that learning between teachers and students can travel both ways.