Deep Sea Chess

I am an MIT EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and MITx DEDP (Data, Economics, and Development Policy) alum and used the play as the first board player of MIT's chess team. Currently, I am one of the co-presidents of MIT's Entrepreneurs Club and a well-known chess coach for children thanks to the successes of my students in World and European Youth and School Chess Championships in both boys and girls categories. Recently, I am working in partnership with continental and national chess federations to develop and scale an innovative curriculum for language, history, and artificial intelligence education through chess.

Globally, more than 250 million children do not know how to read and write and many are struggling to return to school due to the viral outbreak. With an increased need for homeschooling and remote instruction, young learners are experiencing problems related to excessive screen time, technology addiction, and social language learning. There is also an increased interest globally to include artificial intelligence in K-12 curriculum to prepare the workforce for the advances in AI. 

As chess is becoming a compulsory topic in K-12 education, we propose a gamified curriculum that combines chess with language and artificial intelligence education. This project is ready to scale in partnership with national and continental federations to millions of children yearly. 

Furthermore, the intellectual heritage aspects of board games, which includes chess, can create an understanding between different nations as how these games have evolved and borrowed elements from different cultures.

The World Chess Federation (FIDE) estimates with aggregated statistics from 180 national chess federations that more than 10 million children yearly are introduced to chess in schools. Poland has introduced compulsory chess lessons in the first 3 grades of primary education since 2017. In many countries, including the US, chess is among the most popular after-school activities in the first 4 grades of primary education. However, when it comes to combine this global learning experience for young learners, there are not many digital platforms for collaborative learning with a focus on various educational outcomes.

Global education trends show a need for increased focus on literacy and artificial intelligence education. More than 250 million children worldwide do not know how to read or write, and many countries are experiment with gamified pilot programs to improve literacy outcomes. 

Similarly, various AI for K-12 initiatives exist to introduce elements of AI for young learners. The recent advances in game-playing AI agents and their recent success against world human champions created an interesting opportunity to introduce the workings of such AI in a K-12 setting as an educational tool.

We believe that a gamified chess curriculum with a focus on language and AI education will rapidly scale worldwide in partnership with national and continental chess federations, which advise their ministries of education. Our project consists of 4 main parts:

1. a chess curriculum with 64 lessons for blended instruction in primary education. The videos can be customized with unique chess piece designs and the videos include pedagogic visual clues that are synchronous with teacher sound for children who are still mastering their reading skills. Culturally fit voice-overs, translations, and unplugged activities are required for various geographies.

2. a gamified chess learning app for instruction between the ages 4 to 8 with a focus on language education. This educational app will have gamification elements and cute piece animations to engage children. The theme for Africa will be Safari animals.

3. a physical child-friendly chess set with new chess piece designs that are culturally fit for the region where the program will be implemented (for example, for Africa with African animals)

4. An artificial intelligence curriculum for K-12 based on the recent advances of game-playing AI agents. (based on academic work presented during AIED2020 conference "Reinforcement Learning on the Chess Board") 

I recently participated in the AIED2020 conference K-12 workshop and listened to various policy advisors. When you develop a curriculum and the relevant teaching materials, one of the most important considerations is to make the tools as simple as possible so they can be used by a regular teacher with the least amount of confusion. The most successful teaching initiatives that scale well allow the regular teacher to instruct a new topic with a minimal amount of training, because it might not be feasible to send a topic-specific teacher to a school.

Another group of people our project is serving is the parents. They are looking for ways to improve the quality of time their children are spending at home during the viral outbreak. Our gamified solutions can improve the literacy outcomes for young learners and even make the children bilingual at a young age. We interview and get feedback from various chess parents.

Finally, we work directly with national and continental chess federations that supervise the chess certifications that a regular teacher will receive in their region. For example, the African Chess Confederation chess-in-education committee is actively engaged in the design of the entire learning solution. 

"Deep Sea Chess" and its project partner, the African Chess Confederation, work actively for continental teacher training initiatives in over 50 countries in Africa. To improve equity in education, the learning of children and the teaching of instructors can be brought together in a collaborative gamified platform with learning analytics in literacy, chess, and AI skills. Furthermore, the project serves to rebuild the African intellectual heritage, because the board games originate from Africa in ancient Egypt, and during the 13th century, animals gifted from Africa were named as chess pieces in the most famous book on games written in Europe.

When my student, Isik Can, became a silver medalist in World Youth Chess Championship in the U8 age group in 2013, I decided to explore opportunities to expand my chess club within a private school, and I joined the Istanbul Technical University private foundation schools as a chess teacher, where chess has been a compulsory topic in the first 3 primary grades since 2005. When I instructed 288 young children in the first and second grades over a year, I learned that group classroom lessons can be quite challenging compared to one-on-one private chess coaching. Thus, I developed a blended chess learning platform for classroom instruction, which was later a semifinalist in one of the leading university-affiliated startup incubators in the world in 2015, the ITU SEED. Next year, I was named as the main coordinator and my project was named as the solution partner in a pan-European edtech grant application to the H2020 R&D programme in partnership with the European Chess Union. 

Later, I made a presentation to the presidents of national chess federations of Africa during an annual African Chess Confederation meeting, and they agreed to join efforts in fundraising for the African school chess initiative.

I enjoy educating children through board game puzzles and board game history that are part of our common intellectual heritage. For example, one of the most well-known 2-move checkmate puzzles was designed by the world chess champion Paul Morphy from Louisiana. Similarly, the most well-known chess game in the world, "The Opera Game", was played by Paul Morphy in France. The most famous book of games was written in Spain during the 13th century with elements of African animals as chess piece names. 

While the current discussion around slavery is important and has historic roots, even during the slavery common era of 12th and 13th centuries, cultures collaborated to create some intellectual works that I believe children should know. Humanity has a common history through board games all the way from Japan to Europe and to the USA, and as chess is becoming a cheap solution to instructing computation skills in K-12 as a compulsory topic, I believe my experience as a chess player, coach, edtech product manager, and social entrepreneur can add significantly on how chess is taught across geographies and thus create a large social impact. I believe it is worth pursuing this opportunity compared to other alternatives.

Thanks to the successes of my students in World and European Youth and School Chess championships since 2013, I become a well-known chess coach for children internationally. Additionally, I built and piloted a chess-learning solution for schools in various countries, which were awarded in a leading university affiliated startup incubator program. Furthermore, my background from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as well as in Data, Economics, and Development Policy make me in a unique position to propose educational projects with measurable impact. Thus, I have gained the trust of various governmental bodies that want to collaboratively build and scale pilot projects for chess instruction with a focus on literacy and AI education. Recently, after taking MIT's "AI in K-12 education" graduate course from prof. Harold Abelson and prof. Cynthia Breazeal, I also made a presentation during the AIED2020 K-12 workshop with my paper called "Reinforcement Learning on the Chess Board". 

Currently, the African Chess Confederation is interested to spearhead their continental initiative with an edtech solution and a culturally fit, animal themed chess learning game for young children. The project is ready to scale in 54 countries in Africa as shown in their recent letter signed to partner with "Deep Sea Chess". 

While I have previously played world chess champions Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov in chess and held them to a draw in 1997, I am only actively trying to improve on how chess is taught since 2010. I taught chess in a compulsory primary grade setting in 2015 over a year and then built my chess-for-school solution, "Deep Sea Chess", which I have been trying to expand since then. Chess education is difficult to commercialize for various reasons and the ideal kickstart solution depends on grants and philanthropic funding. Sustainability is possible after certain years through some commercialization of digital products and chess sets for children, but initially to build an attractive product required and continues to require my bootstrapping as a social entrepreneur. 

I have a wide skill set in topics other than chess education, such as healthcare and machine learning, and the pressure from my family and friends has been to give up on this difficult to commercialize idea of chess instruction with a focus on language and AI instruction.

But I believe in the impact I can make in children worldwide, and I am convinced that with my network and skillset I can make it happen. 

Chess has become a compulsory topic in Poland in 2017 for the 3 grades of primary education. In 2016, I led the efforts to write a 5 million € grant application with the European Chess Union for the H2020 edtech project call. I was named the producer and the main coordinator of this project as can be seen in the letter of intent signed by the president of European Chess Union in 2016.

Even an international mind sport organization requires active social entrepreneurs to initiative and kickstart collaborative projects that have the potential to scale. Later, I also pitched a version of this project at the board meeting of the African Chess Confederation and received a letter of collaboration, which was also renewed in June 2020 for fundraising in the US. 

I am individually able to lead and get support of the global official chess community in national and continental children chess projects. 

I also led officials from Mongolia to participate at the World Innovation Summit on Education in Qatar in 2017, which later resulted in a pilot project in Mongolia, the leading country for children projects of the Asian Chess Federation.

I want to write here briefly about our partner, the African Chess Confederation. Many countries adopt their school-chess initiatives in the guidance of their national chess federation. And the national chess federations together form an international body that consults and acts together in their school chess initiatives. Thus, the African Chess Confederation is actively consulting and leading school chess initiatives in all regions in Africa. With their partnership a pan-African education project could be initiated, which they are ready for as shown in their letter of collaboration renewed in June 2020.

There are many educational platforms and initiatives focusing separately on chess, literacy, or AI education, but none combine these relevant 3 elements into 1 integrated curriculum and experience. Thus, currently there is a unique opportunity to both create and then scale an educational app and curriculum in partnership with national chess federations and chess certified teachers worldwide. For example, in many countries, there is at least 1 chess certified teacher per school. 

The advances in game-playing AI agents by Google Deepmind also created a high interest in recent years on how they work. Thus, a chess and AI curriculum will be quite attractive in many K-12 settings worldwide.

There is existing research on how chess impacts education during early childhood when the brain development is the fastest. Kasparov Chess Foundation and also the World Chess Federation has a complication of such research on their website.

When I attended the "Early Childhood Education Saul Zaentz Bootcamp" at Harvard last semester, two topics came forward: 

1. the need for data collection across multiple early childhood settings (home, school, and other learning locations)
2. literacy skills 

The current way chess is taught worldwide during early childhood cannot be said to include those two focus areas, so the change would be in 2 ways.

1. To include a focus on literacy education with data collection efforts

2. To scale chess as a compulsory topic 

To make chess compulsory is relatively simpler compared to other topics, because chess as an educational intervention is cheap to implement compared to other alternatives with a child-friendly chess set cost of around $2. Thus, it is not unfeasible to send a chess set, a book, and a website login card to every child in the first grade in a country. Given the increased need for home instruction during the viral outbreak, chess provides a unique opportunity for children as a an alternative to technology addiction. Furthermore, intergenerational gameplay is possible and the interest of children can be channelled into and complemented with computer science and AI education.

A complete solution will require a blended platform to be used at school and home with unplugged activities.

The ultimate change would be measurable educational outcomes across various metrics in a randomized control trial. I am a graduate of the MIT micromasters program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy, which deal with randomized control trials of educational interventions. Ideally, such pilot project would need to measure and evaluate educational outcomes in various metrics.

While currently deepseachess.com works, the product needs to be improved with multilingual voice-overs and an animated chess-learning app for young children for wider usage and country-wide pilot projects.The platform is used by interested chess teachers worldwide using study sheets that are integrated with online chess puzzles as blended edtech solution. Individual usage is not easy to scale, thus partnerships as national pilot projects are needed.

The AI & chess curriculum is yet to be developed. 

With some funds for development, the project would scale from 10% to 100% of the primary grade children in a target country or continent. For the African school chess initiative, we expect a quick adaptation by at least half of the national chess federations in Africa as their official chess-in-school digital solution. There are around 20 million children in Africa on the first grade. %10 to %100 of those can be taught chess using our methodology. 

Outside Africa, we also have partnerships with American Chess Confederation, European Chess Union, and Asian Chess Federation, so once the product is well-developed, simultaneous pilot projects can be conducted in interested countries.

The goal is to build a sustainable online education and gaming platform where children can learn languages, AI, and history through chess. To scale an education solution is much simpler with national partnerships outside the US, so we will negotiate with a few national chess federations to adopt our solution as the official one and expand in their countries as a joint project. 

So chess has an advantage over other games in terms of educational value offering, cost, scalability, and the cultural heritage aspects it carries.

There are many obstacles, including financial and cultural, but I think there are also many individuals who care for children's education and our common intellectual heritage through ancient board games. Many people also didn't play chess when they were young or they just disliked chess when they were young, so it is not easy to convince everybody that chess is the ultimate game to be scaled in schools worldwide. 

There are also competing games such as Minecraft with large budgets, but a platform strategy can be used even to take advantage of such games to spread our curriculum. 

African Chess Confederation. Please look at the attached letter of collaboration. 

I am tasked with fundraising for the Africa School Chess initiative and for the production of a chess-learning game with Safari animals.

We are setting up a non-profit in Cambridge, "World Children Chess Foundation", to manage our fundraising efforts for the Africa School Chess Initiative. 

We also have the "Deep Sea Chess" brand that can be formed as an LLC in partnership with the non-profit. 

The main path to sustainability is through chess set sales worldwide as well as digital product sales on the children chess platform. However, the initial offering has to be free-to-play like in most other children educational software targeting this age group.

The project has been part of MIT's Sandbox entrepreneurship program and previously part of Istanbul Technical University seed startup incubator program. 

We are looking for $150k to $300k to kickstart and scale the African school chess initiative using our educational platform.

Dr. Eric Klopfer, the director of JWEL at MIT, had suggested last semester that I apply for the Solve competition, and I think among all competitions offered this year at MIT Solve, the Elevate prize is the best fit for my project that is ready to scale during the viral outbreak.

Harvard Saul Zaentz Early Childhood Initiative

aieduation.mit.edu

Jameel World Education Laboratory - JWEL MIT

Unicef's Children Fund

Aga Khan Foundation

Institute of International Education

Qatar Foundation