At Whizz Education (Whizz), we aim to provide a learning journey that is tailored to each child’s individual needs, regardless of their background, age or ability. We see the potential to make this vision a reality through the iTalk2Learn project, and we believe every educator should pay close attention to the innovations of this project.
Here are five reasons why we believe that the iTalk2Learn platform has huge potential to help you and your students.
1. A truly adaptive learning platform
In recent years, ‘adaptive learning’ has become common parlance in the EdTech space. Despite the ubiquity of adaptive learning tools, many are based on weak predictive models of student performance.
Not ours.
iTalk2Learn’s approach to adaptive learning is rooted in cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. The underlying performance predictor is able to take into account all historical data of an entire community of users. The methods have been validated by the scientific community in the form of published papers, and testing is underway to measure their effectiveness in real-world settings.
Whatever the outcome of those trials, educators can take comfort in the knowledge that some of the best minds in the machine learning field have gone to task to making online learning truly personalised for every student.
2. Responds to speech and emotion, not just clicks
The adaptive potential of iTalk2Learn stretches beyond clicks and text input. iTalk2Learn seeks to humanise the student-computer interaction by detecting and responding patterns in speech and emotion. If a student is bored, or is finding a problem too challenging, the platform will respond accordingly.
The ultimate goal of iTalk2Learn is nothing short of the replication of a human tutor. However, it is important to note that iTalk2Learn is not designed to replace a human tutor; it is designed to support and enhance the teacher’s capacity to teach in the most effective and beneficial manner for each and every student.
3. Grounded in education research
iTalk2Learn lies at the nexus of research, innovation and practice. Much of the project is informed by education research that points to a need to nurture both procedural and conceptual strands of mathematical learning. Through iTalk2Learn, this research is ongoing and, critically, is largely based on the everyday classroom experiences of young students.
4. Fractions Lab
To promote conceptual understanding of mathematical content, iTalk2Learn has set out to develop an exploratory learning environment (ELE) in which students can experiment with ideas in a more open setting. An early triumph of iTalk2Learn is Fractions Lab, an ELE that lets students play with properties of fractions.
At Whizz, we’re already thinking about ways to blend ELEs like Fractions Lab with our existing library of content.
5. Open-source
iTalk2Learn is being developed as an open-source platform and is best thought of as a test-bed for future technologies, where interested parties can combine the various tools and features to fit their own purpose. Whether you are interested in adaptive sequencers, exploratory environments, speech recognition or any other aspect of the project, stay tuned because it will be in your hands soon enough.
We are excited by the potential of iTalk2Learn to enhance online learning across multiple dimensions and we invite all educators to reflect on the potential uses of the platform to further their own work.
For more information on how iTalk2Learn could impact upon your teaching and your students’ learning, get in touch today!
