Selected

Last Updated June 15, 2021

Equitable Classrooms

sensoryREADY

The first modular plug-and-play product for sensory environments, creating immersive educational and therapeutic spaces at an affordable price

Team Leader

Ayman Arandi

Solution Pitch

The Problem

A concept invented in the early 1970s, a sensory environment is a controlled space of light, music, and video that allows the creation of a stimulating (or de-stimulating) space to reduce stress, increase attention and improve communication between teacher, therapists, parent, and a child. Since then, academic research into the impact of sensory input on the effectiveness of sensory spaces in both therapeutic and educational spaces has been growing. Yet, the main challenge of implementation for sensory environments remains: solutions are often bulky, rigid, and expensive, making this technology an exclusive tool accessible only to large institutions with extensive resources.

The Solution

sensoryREADY is an innovative technology allowing for the creation of education and rehabilitation-friendly spaces with ease. It's the first plug-and-play, modular and affordable sensory environment solution available on the market today. Helping to break communication barriers between teachers and students, this technology creates a safe and immersive space in the classroom and delivers information in a more effective manner. Thanks to sensoryREADY’s affordability, even small and medium-sized schools can access important sensory resources in classrooms.

Users can mix music, control lights and colors, and play educational content and games to adapt the classroom to meet students’ needs. sensoryREADY is easy to use: it plugs in via USB to a projector or TV, connects to smart colorful light bulbs, and allows control of the sensory environment through a mobile application.

Stats

Currently, there are 10,000 students benefiting from sensoryREADY across 300 schools in 5 countries.
Around 40 percent of sensoryREADY’s beneficiaries are students with developmental disorders, stress-related conditions, and learning difficulties.

Market Opportunity

Today, most modern classrooms are equipped with technologies such as projectors and possibly Smart Boards. However, modernizing classrooms has always been a challenge due to several issues: infrastructure, budgets, complexity, and staff tech-readiness. As a result, only simple and easy-to-use technologies like computers, projectors, and speakers have high levels of adoption in schools.

Sensory environments are becoming an essential tool of inclusive education, as they enable teachers to optimize their space to help students learn in a more efficient and immersive way. sensoryREADY’s technology is more accessible than any other solution on the market, both because of its lower price and plug-and-play model. Many solutions requiring specialized equipment and infrastructure cost more than $9,000 compared to just $3,500 for sensoryREADY.

Organization Highlights

Partnered with Save the Children Palestine to implement a successful pilot project, introducing sensory environments to public schools for inclusive education.
sensoryREADY’s oldest sensory environments have been running in remote areas of Palestine for 5 years.

Partnership Goals

sensoryREADY seeks:

Strategic partnerships with impact investors, particularly those in the education-technology sector and Middle East and North Africa region to help sensoryREADY scale.
Connections to education leaders in the Middle East to implement sensory environments in schools, health centers, refugee camps, and rehabilitation centers.
Improved digital platform resources to increase user experience and scale impact.
Connections and resources to implement large-scale educational projects for children.

Solution Overview

Solution Name:

sensoryREADY

One-line solution summary:

Affordable safe immersive educational and therapy friend space.

Pitch your solution.

Providing a safe, interactive and immersive space across schools and centres is quite expensive and resource extensive job. Yet, its becoming more necessary with advancing world, where typical class and therapy room is becoming outdated.

With sensoryREADY, you are able to have your own sensory space in matter of minutes and for a fraction of the price of any available technology in the market.

Our solution have been developed by educators, psychologist, therapist, engineer and content curator over the last 8 years. Currently, there are more than 70 thousand children and adult benefiting on daily basis from sensoryREADY in +250 institution across 6 countries.

Having the possibility to control your environment is a very powerful thing, specially for children. And it becomes more important with children with development conditions. Sensory Environment is an idea innovated in the 70's, yet got commercialised in early 2000. The main challenge of such technology is price and installation. Our innovative solution solves these two issues by combining off-shelf-components and open-source engines.

Our team have invested more than 1.5M in development, all generating through organic sales.

We believe in the next 10 years, every school, centre and hospital will have a sensory environment. And we - at Iris solution - have the key to make that possible.

Film your elevator pitch.

What specific problem are you solving?

Safe, affordable and immersive spaces in educational and therapy spaces.

What is your solution?

Modular, plug-and-play, and affordable sensory environment. A sensory environment is controlled space of light, music, and video that allows to create stimulating (or de-stimulating) space to reduce stress, increase attention and improve communication between teacher, therapists, parent and a child.

Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

Over and over - we offer our solution for educational and rehabilitations institutions: Schools, KGs, nurseries, centres, and hospitals. By providing a safe space in their premises, it increase the quality of the service delivered and improve the quality of life for our users.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?

Support teachers to adapt their pedagogy, facilitate personalized instruction, and communicate with students and their families in remote and hybrid settings.

Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.

We've built our solution organically to be affordable in the local conditions in Palestine - which gives us the advantage of surviving a quite challenging environment from the very beginning.

In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?

Nablus

What is your solution’s stage of development?

Scale: A sustainable enterprise working in several communities or countries that is looking to scale significantly, focusing on increased efficiency.

Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.

We are currently operating in 6 countries.

Who is the Team Lead for your solution?

Ayman Arandi

Solver Team

Organization Type:
For-Profit

Headquarters:
Nablus, Palestine

Stage:
Scale

Working In:
Palestine, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Israel, Lithuania, United Arab Emirates

Current Employees:
9

Solution Website:
https://www.iris.ps

Solution Team:

Ayman Arandi