The Global learning Xprize foundation has showered praise to a local video and audio production company, True Vision Production (TVP) for producing remarkable videos, showcasing young children teaching themselves how to read, write and count by using tablets.
The global X-Prize project was designed to equip young children with basic skills as millions of them are globally reported not to be not able to read, write and count.
Capturing of the video footages has enabled two international educational companies, OneBillion.org which is based in the UK and Kenya, and KitKit School, from South Korea and the US, to emerge winners in the Elon Musk-backed Global Learning Xprize held in the United States of America (USA) in a fortnight.
Elon Musk, the Tec Billionaire and CEO of SpaceX and Tesla provided a total of $15 million in prize money for the project designed to boost open-source educational software.
The two companies emerged winners after KitKit School developing a program with a game-based core and flexible learning architecture to help kids learn independently, while Onebillion merged numeracy content with literacy material to provide directed learning and activities alongside monitoring to personalize responses to children’s needs.
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- Bosi wa X-Prize aimwagia sifa TVP katika tuzo za kimataifa zilizofanyika katika ofisi Google huko Marekani
- Mkuu wa Mkoa aimwagia sifa True Vision Production (TVP)
Both teams went home with $5 million each to continue their work in developing solutions to social challenges especially in the Educational sector and scale up their learning software across the world.
The awards are aimed at assisting more than 250 million children around the world who have problems of accessing basic education (can’t read or write). The idea is to see them being equipped with skills on how to read,count and write by using tablets.
According to data from UNESCO, one in five children around the world are not in school. Some of the researches indicate that the world needs to recruit another 68.8 million teachers to provide every child with primary and secondary education by 2040.
CCI based in New York, Robotutor from Pittsburgh, International KitKit School from Thailand, Chimple from India, OneBillion from Kenya and UK are among the five finalists whereby each of them had their tablets tested by thousands of children in 170 remote villages in Tanzania to see how useful and helpful they are in teaching then illiterate children.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, Xprize CEO Anousheh Ansari said that TVP did an impressive work in the field by producing high quality and captivating videos that enabled them to visually portray what was being executed in Tanzania.
The videos were showcased at the Xprize awards ceremony hosted at the Google Spruce Goose Hangar.
During the tests that required each product to be field tested in Swahili, almost 3000 children in 170 remote villages across Tanzania were reached and given tablets to help them read, write and gain arithmetic skills.
“We travelled to remote areas in Tanzania to reach children in villages and provide them with tablets and solar charging panels for theur successive use of learning”, said Anousheh Ansari, CEO of Xprize, in a statement.
She further added that after the 15-month program working on the donated Google tablets, most of the children are now able to read and write, teach one another and their surrounding communities.
In his message to the Managing Director of TVP, David Sevuri, Dave Kebo the Manager – Video Production, Global Marketing and Communication at Xprize, admitted that the video footages were complimented by everyone and they intend to work with TVP in the near future.
“The videos have captured the real life environment of the African child, this even made one of the co-founders of OneBillion from Kenya to get so emotional because she was reflecting on her real life,” said Kebo in his acknowledgement message to TVP MD.
Sevuri said that producing the videos for Xprize has enhanced the company’s reputation because it is an initiative geared towards transforming lives of children in Tanzania who for so long have been deprived of the opportunity to get basic education thus living in extreme poverty and ignorance.
“The production of these videos has been a prestigious and tremendous opportunity for us as a company to showcase our work globally. In collaboration with Xprize we managed to reach the children in remote areas in Tanzania capturing real life environment of children in our country”, said Sevuri in a statement.
