Today, 57 million children have no access to primary school and 250 million more children have access, but fail to attain basic literacy or numeracy.  What if tomorrow we were able to provide every child access to a basic level of education?  That is the goal of the new XPRIZE competition for global learning.

Because of our passion for building great software that solves real world problems and makes the world a better place, Mobility Labs is very excited about the Global Learning XPRIZE.  The goal of XPRIZE competitions is to bring about radical innovations to benefit humanity.  The Global Learning XPRIZE challenges teams around the world to build an app to teach basic literacy and numeracy skills to children who may not have access to primary education.  At the competition’s conclusion, the winning product’s code will be open source and licensed under Apache 2.0, meaning anyone with an interest to use, adapt, or improve the app can do so.

To help children develop basic literacy and numeracy skills, we’re building a self-guided learning application for Android tablets. These tablets are becoming more widespread thanks to falling product prices as well as their ease of use.  Additionally, many countries have begun distributing tablets for education in order to support children who do not have access to traditional schools, which has created a greater demand for digital educational content.

What makes this app special (and fun!):

• Children learn foundational math and reading skills through games
• Diagnostics keep the content at the right level of difficulty
• Children choose their own path to mastery of skills within a structured curriculum
• Multiple activity types to practice core concepts
• Asynchronous social interaction to encourage competition and collaboration
• Opportunities to generate and share their own content
• Access to a library of additional supporting resources, like e-books, songs, and games

Outside of our close collaboration with educators throughout the product development process, our team has experience with instructional design and creating digital media for young children.  We believe that we currently have the ability to leverage technology to make an enormous impact on children and their communities.

Throughout the development process, we’ll be posting updates on the blog, so check back for more updates on the audiences we’re helping, the games we’re building, and ways that you can be a part of our work.