Big Bird and Elmo are getting a tech savvy upgrade. IBM on Wednesday announced a three-year partnership with the nonprofit that produces “Sesame Street” to develop educational products for pre schoolers, including a smart Elmo doll and software personalized for specific learning needs.
Sesame Workshop CEO Jeffrey Dunn said in the announcement that pairing the nonprofit’s expertise on early-childhood development with IBM’s Watson the artificical intelligence program that beat human competitors on “Jeopardy” can help create “the next generation of tailored learning tools.”
“A generation ago, ‘Sesame Street’ used the ubiquitous presence of television to reach vulnerable children who did not have access to the learning opportunities that affluent and middle-class kids did. It worked very well,” Dunn said. “Ultimately, the goal is to provide children from all socio-economic backgrounds with the opportunity for meaningful, personalized education in their most formative years.”
Concepts for learning products being considered by the project include smart toys like an Elmo doll that listens to a child and suggests playtime activities like counting games based on their learning levels. Apps that teach kids to read or programs that help teachers craft class plans for individual students have also been sketched out by the partnership.
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IBM and Sesame Workshop will develop its new learning products for preschoolers by drawing on gather expertise from teachers, academics, researchers, technologists, gamers, performers, and media executives. The Watson program will help with its ability to learn from huge amounts of unstructured data and deliver very personalized solutions for educational software.
Todd Rose, an advisor on the project and director of Mind, Brain, and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said in the announcement that the partnership can develop “kid-friendly tools that empower each child to find his or her own path to learning.”
“Because the foundation of children’s intellect, personality, and skills are formed in the first few years of their lives, ages zero to five are the most critical,” Rose said. “There are huge opportunities in early childhood education, but we need to recognize that preschoolers do not all learn in the same way.”
Date: April 27, 2016