We are currently in the process of planning development of Tommy Teaches variants to address the needs of Special Ed children. We need your help in order to make this happen.
Summary
We need 250 votes to qualify for a grant that would provide the resources necessary to adapt our teaching software for use by special-needs children. If you'd like to help please click on the link below and vote (Facebook required).
Support Tommy Teaches for Special Ed
What's this about?
Some time ago we released Tommy Teaches, an app aimed at helping young children learn a range of subjects in a fun and engaging way.
The app is free and it was very well received by parents and teachers alike. Engagement is good. Kids like it. It uses concepts such as spaced repetition and adaptive algorithms with the aim of producing better results faster than common approaches. A great deal of effort was devoted to making the app fun and engaging.
A surprising finding was that the Special Ed teachers and parents loved the concept and started to use it right away when they could. They quickly expressed the need for variants that would deal with the spectrum of disabilities they encounter. We've had a range of interesting conversations with both parents and teachers in order to further understand what's needed.
The conclusion was simple: We can and would very much like to help.
The basic framework behind TommyTeaches is solid and can be adapted to other paradigms. In order to create versions that are better suited for special-needs children we’ll need to invest significant effort and resources into understanding and testing ideas. What works well for the general population might not work at all in the context of children with a range of disabilities.
A typical Special Ed class might have a situation where nearly every child has a different disability or different degrees of the same disability. This is a significant challenge in that it is nearly impossible to create a single app that will best serve every child in the class. Because of this it is likely we will have to conduct dozens -if not hundreds- of experiments as well as hire specialists to help guide the effort. Regrettably this will be a very expensive process for which we need to seek external funding.
To that end we've entered into a competition to win a grant through Chase Bank. A panel of judges will decide which businesses are awarded the available grants based on various criteria. However, we must first pass an initial test by the middle of November: We need to collect at least 250 votes to show support for our mission. This is where you come in.
If you are able to help, please click on the link below and vote (Facebook required):
Support Tommy Teaches for Special Ed
Also, please take a moment to reach out to your friends, family and collegues for further support. It's as simple as emailing a link to this page.
We are excited about the potential to contribute to this community by taking Tommy Teaches –a technology inspired by our own kids- and adapting it to address the needs of children with special educational requirements.
Thank you.