Now ready for prime time: Voice-enabled experiences that entertain and educate kids

Back in 2011, the Sesame Workshop and a think tank called the Joan Ganz Cooney Center asserted that voice-enabled apps and games were “up to the task” of helping kids learn to read.

But… Kids are complex, and designing products that actually work for them can take a lot more time and effort than anticipated.

In fact, it took another 10 years for voice-powered tools to be good enough to be adopted by entertainment and education companies and be integrated into their tools for the home and classroom.

At SoapBox Labs, we get it. As the world’s leading experts in speech recognition for kids we understand that before companies put their trust, and commercial heft, behind voice-powered experiences for kids, they need to ask – is this technology going to work every time?

And here’s what “work” means: That the technology is advanced enough to handle a 3 year old voice and an 8 year old voice; that it’ll cater to kids of different accents and dialects; and that it will accommodate the randomness of kids’ behaviour as they play and learn using technology.

It may have taken until 2021 for speech recognition to become a technology worthy of entertainment and education companies’ trust, but as Margery Mayer says in the foreword to our new white paper, its adoption as an educational tool “could not have come at a more crucial moment” and will have “a profound impact on the trajectory of young learners”.

Voice is every kid’s most natural gift. SoapBox empowers kids to use their voices to engage, shape and learn from the world around them.

In our new white paper, many of the world’s preeminent thinkers on education talk about how voice-powered math, literacy and language tools can help kids to learn and have fun while learning. And how these tools can support teachers to provide more personalized approaches to kids on their individual learning journeys.

Read our white paper today – download it now.

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