LiiveBoard
- Pre-Seed
Basic literacy, beginning in 'Grammar School', is the baseline of our Information Economy. WordsLiive has built a 'Real-time Cultural Responsiveness' platform for classrooms to co-produce lessons with music artists making the process to learn to read and write much more inclusive and relevant.
WordsLiive has developed the Culturally Responsive Pedagogy needed to meet the instructional demands for today’s classrooms. Today’s youth need to see themselves in their education to aspire to perform in school. We’ve created a patented teaching methodology that integrates song lyrics into students’ reading materials. We’re launching our "Real-Time Culturally Responsive" digital platform which enables teachers in a classroom to, in real-time, and on-demand, integrate cultural items like music lyrics into their lessons on grammar and literary concepts, which are the foundation of literacy.
By responding to classrooms culturally, we've been able to observe a marked increase in engagement and performance over literacy content. The mastery of basic literacy is our 'Ground Zero' for the fight to develop a functional and progressive populace equipped with the higher order thinking skills requisite for participation in the new economy.
As for scale, given that students, aged 12 -17, over-index on both smartphone use and music streaming, it becomes clear that a literacy delivery system that utilizes music on a mobile platform should have significant adoption and performance increases in the classroom, and most pointedly for literacy! Given that there's still a protocol for English as the global business language, we have a worldwide opportunity for our platform!
Our country averages only an approximate third of all students being able to read at grade level. Basic literacy is the foundation of success in this economy which depends on higher order skills. Failure to read proficiently has multiple ramifications for individuals including: lower employment options, greater rates of incarceration and more dependence on public assistance. More clearly, the more our current students fail at basic literacy, the more deficient our economy will be tomorrow, in addressing the resource needs of the population.
Broadly, we focus on one key new INPUT into the literary learning process, popular urban music! We’ve found that integrating the lyrics of popular urban music, as the reference text or supplemental text, leads to an OUTPUT of students’ identification and familiarity with literary technique, structure, and device use. The students’ ability to identify and recognize literary technique, structure, and device leads to an OUTCOME of increased reading and writing proficiency as measured by classroom grades. The ultimate IMPACT is thus a greater percentage of black and latino students who are grade-level reading proficient.
Year 2020 - 40% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Year 2025 - 45% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Year 2030 - 50% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Year 2040 - 65% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Track and measure student success of proficiency tests - Year 2020 - 40% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Track and measure student success of proficiency tests - Year 2025 - 45% Grade Level Reading Proficient
Track and measure student success of proficiency tests - Year 2040 - 65% Grade Level Reading Proficient
- Adolescent
- Lower middle income economies (between $1006 and $3975 GNI)
- Primary
- Secondary
- Urban
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- US and Canada
- Consumer-facing software (mobile applications, cloud services)
- Digital systems (machine learning, control systems, big data)
- Management & design approaches
Our technology enables a new idea, that we invented, called 'REAL TIME Cultural Responsiveness' for the classroom! We've modularized the lesson planning process via a co-production platform between music artists, teachers, and students. Students who have traditionally been left behind during the learning process, no longer have to be as teachers can immediately integrate their students' preferences into the teaching process via our platform.
We're COMPLETELY dedicated and designed to 'Responsiveness' inside classrooms with students. Our entire product existence is designed to be student centered and respond to the learning needs of large groups of chronically underperforming students.
We're targeting the out-of-pocket spending by teachers (Avg. $485/year) AND direct to school districts to buy subscriptions for their students. We'll be available through social media and digital app stores.
- 4-5 (Prototyping)
- For-Profit
- United States
Words Liive has earned over $300,000 to date in contractual revenue with local school districts. Partnering with Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS), Prince George’s County, MD Public Schools (PGCPS), and select charter schools has allowed Words Liive to refine our business model, establish a brand and business model, as well as test our platform features. As an education program, Words Liive has facilitated augmentation programs for schools, libraries, and civic organizations.
Most recently, Sage the founder, was awarded a 2017 Camelback Ventures Fellowship. Additionally, in 2016, Words Liive was named a Top 3 EdTech Start-up at South by Southwest Education Conference and was selected as a Hi Lab VIP Company, twice. Sage is also a Social Entrepreneur Fellow at the Halcyon Incubator in Washington, DC.
Only one major factor being us securing partnership with Spotify. There's a legal hurdle we need to clear as we integrate copyright protected content into classrooms.
- 4 years
- 1-3 months
- 12-18 months
https://youtu.be/_9RqbJzHSec
- Technology Access
- Future of Work
- 21st Century Skills
- Arts Education
- Literacy
One of the greatest threats we all currently face is Artificial Intelligence. Punctuated by the changing economy to a creative and design based one, we may be creating the conditions for anarchy in the future as our youth are performing worse on basic literacy. We believe that we need to coexist with sophistication with our new tech based society. To produce the higher order thinking requisite to continue to create and operation our technology, we'll need a rich push in grammar schools!
Currently, our partners are school districts and teachers on the east coast.
No pure competitor as we're creating a new idea for classrooms. Most relevant: teacherspayteachers.c