Smart Kidz Club Classroom Solution

Disruptive Early Education Mobile Learning Tool for English Literacy & Numeracy—connects teachers-students-parents around Smart Kidz Club's US-based educational library. 

Problem: The education of millions of young learners has been disrupted by the pandemic. These children now face a mammoth learning slide. Teachers alone are unable to help each individual student and at-home learning will be a major driver of catching up. However, most parents are at a loss of how and what skills need to be reinforced at home. Online connectivity is another major obstacle being faced by many families. We need enabling technologies that conquer the barriers preventing millions of learners from accessing educational materials and resources. 

Solution: Smart Kidz Club's Classroom App has been designed with enterprise level mobile technology that works offline so as to be impactful in its reach and accessibility. The Classroom App allows easy collaboration between teachers and parents to guide children to read and learn with Smart Kidz Club's exclusive knowledge-based educational library aligned with each learner's individual level and interest. The Classroom App has the power to engage learners with a game-based engagement module and empowers teachers to guide and monitor each student's progress. 

Impact: This solution, if scaled, will help students acquire foundational English literacy and numeracy skills, continue learning from home, and cope with learning losses. It will empower teachers to continue to be connected to their students despite school closures and help parents stay involved and informed about their child's learning and progress. The solution works with smartphones or tablets without the need for continuous streaming of the internet thereby maximizing reach and bridging the digital divide.

Due to the global pandemic, students from all walks of lives have been affected mentally, physically and academically.  Prolonged school closure in Malaysia due to COVID-19 has shaken up the learning experience of the students.  The pandemic has affected over 1.5 billion learners in 192 countries. Mitigation measures have contributed to the slowing of economic activities, interruption of people’s daily life and closure of schools and other education institutions. Many schools in Malaysia were forced to make swift changes to move to online teaching when MCO (Movement Control Order) was imposed—4 Million children were affected. But this comes with several challenges. First, one cannot assume that all tertiary students enjoy unlimited internet access or possess laptops or desktops that allow them to attend online classes freely. The Internet Users Survey 2018 found that there is a sizable disparity between urban and rural internet users. Urban users makeup 70% of internet users. Second, coverage and speed of the internet also vary depending on one’s budget and location. Hence, it is likely that some do not enjoy internet access, as the way most of their peers who live in urban areas do. Online connectivity is a major obstacle being faced by many families preventing millions of learners from accessing educational materials and resources. These students run a high risk of being left behind if classes are entirely conducted online. Online learning also makes it tougher for teachers to connect with students in a bid to create a conducive learning environment. 

There is a clear correlation between English proficiency and economic competitiveness for all Asian countries. English is called the “basic skill” for success in the 21st century. The Classroom Solution is designed with enterprise level mobile technology that works offline thus impactful in its reach and accessibility. This personalized and engaging student-centered learning tool enables teachers to create digital classrooms while achieving higher student outcomes for all types of learners. All content in the Smart Kidz Club library is leveled by ages, reading levels, grades by ATOS levels. The solution works with smartphones or tablets without the need for continuous streaming of the internet thereby bridging the digital divide. This solution, if scaled, will help Pre-K to Grade 5 students continue learning from home, cope with learning losses, acquire basic English reading, comprehension, and numeracy skills. The government put physical lessons on pause as the country went into lockdown. The Ministry of Education quickly revamped its national remote learning platform so students could continue learning at home. The Smart Kidz Club platform will provide the right knowledge and perspectives for students to excel. With the offline access of Smart Kidz Club, every child has the potential to access high quality education. Our partner in Malaysia is using Smart Kidz Club's Classroom  solution to connect the teachers with students and continue the lessons despite school closures. However, we need more resources to scale the solution to more schools, teachers and students and help these children get a global academic advantage.

Smart Kidz Club's Classroom App works offline and connects teachers and students remotely through mobile technology that enables the underserved learners get access to guided learning in low connectivity environments. Our solution increases equitable access to quality learning opportunities through offline and virtual models, especially for underserved learners in low connectivity environments. 

Smart Kidz Club's digital library of educational resources delivered through the mobile app is designed based on the science of learning and development with the objective of improving English literacy, numeracy, and social emotional learning. The read along technology, extensive and open book choice with several reading levels support a diverse range of learning pace and styles of students. Our "just right" reading methodology is based on a 2018 study by Dr. Hutton and uses human narration for all our content without any harmful distractions or animations.  

Smart Kidz Club's library consists of 85% nonfiction content that is diverse, globally relevant and includes resources on early STEM concepts like physics, health and wellness, space and astronomy, health sciences, environmental sciences, social sciences. 

The Classroom App equips teachers, parents and students with an easy-to-use, comprehensive EdTech tool that connects them with the students and parents to continue teaching remotely using the same core library. Teachers have access to an in-built teacher guide that helps them map the content to their personalized grade-specific curriculum and align with their lesson plan. Easy monitoring of their students, both individual and the entire class, helps them keep track of the progress.

Surinder Sharma, (She/Her), CEO & Founder, USA—Team Lead

Rajeev Karpe, (He/Him), President, Asia Pacific, Singapore—Solution Lead, Participant in the support program

Smart Kidz Club Classroom Solution is unique in three distinct ways:

1. Its ability to work offline without the need for continuous streaming of the internet: This increases accessibility remote or in low- and no-internet settings. The app can be updated whenever there is availability of free Wifi.

2. Its ability to connect teachers, parents and students with an easy access mobile app that can be downloaded on smartphones and tablets: This enables the input of two important stakeholders in a child's learning and education outcomes—teacher and parent. This also helps parents stay engaged and involved in their child's learning at home.

3. Access to Smart Kidz Club's UNIQUE LIBRARY of high-quality US-based digital educational content (85% nonfiction) developed and owned by Smart Kidz Club—includes Teacher Guide, different types of resources like flashcards, quizzes, learning activities, read along, audio only books.

Most other solutions only have one of the three components. Our Classroom solution enables any individual/teacher to set up a personalized teaching community in a variety of settings—school, early play centers, tutoring, out- of-school learning communities, refugee camps or other scenarios where a regular school is not an option. The teacher uses the App on her tablet or smartphone to connect to her students remotely and virtually with the app to guide and help continue at-home learning and teaching. 

The engagement module with rewards, badges and leaderboards offers additional motivation and encouragement for the students to engage in learning. 

The human-narration enables English language development and correct English pronunciations right from childhood.

Namibia Reads App—a nationwide literacy initiative of our B2C app launched in Namibia in 2020, sponsored by a US nonprofit, is currently being tested for its effective literacy and educational outcomes in select primary schools by University of Delaware and the Namibia Ministry of Education Arts and Culture. 

Smart Kidz Club's B2C Apps are teacher approved by Google Playstore and available around the world on iOS and Android platforms, having received great reviews and testimonials by parents. 

In Malaysia, our Classroom Solution, launched in response to the COVID pandemic, is currently being used by a tutoring center to keep their students reading and learning remotely and virtually during COVID school closures. We plan to pilot the Classroom Solution in select primary schools/early learning centers to test early English language development and literacy. Once we have positive results, we plan to expand the solution to other centers, regions, and countries.

Smart Kidz Club Classroom Solution is delivered via mobile apps available on Android and iOS platforms. The apps, developed and owned by Smart Kidz Club, which are already proven to work in 65 countries around the world, are continuously evolving with addition of new features, new content types, and integration of innovative technology built on Native iOS & Android platforms. Smart Kidz Club's content presentation is proprietary and designed and developed with a goal of being appealing for children to attract and engage them in reading. We use Google cloud infrastructure to scale on a mass level with auto scaling policies in place as well as automation of tasks for user engagement. In the future, we plan to integrate AI to further scale user engagement.

It is estimated that more than 250 million school children throughout the world cannot read.(1) This is unfortunate because literacy has enormous benefits – both for the individual and society. Higher literacy rates are associated with healthier populations, less crime, greater economic growth, and higher employment rates. Worldwide, over half of the 1.5B secondary language learners are English Language Learners. English language proficiency is a determining factor for social mobility & learning opportunities that many students fail to reach. 

More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has created severe disruption to global education systems, by forcing more than 1.6 billion learners in over 190 countries out of school at the peak of the crisis.(2) School closures lead to more school dropouts, leave learners at a higher risk of abuse, loss of confidence and self-esteem, and contribute to a decline in quality teaching and learning. While the result has been a scramble to online learning and the use of assorted EdTech tools to prevent disruptions in learning, the biggest challenge has been the lack of equitable access to internet or online connectivity. COVID-19 and the need for remote learning have thrown a glaring spotlight on the digital divide—the fact that internet and mobile network access varies greatly in low- and middle-income countries. 

In addition, teachers have been burdened with having to adopt and use new, often complicated technologies, having to reinvent lesson plans and relying on teaching and learning approaches that do not work well. They may face a complex learning curve with these unfamiliar education technologies, without having a chance to evaluate their effectiveness in remote education settings.

 Smart Kidz Club Classroom Solution offer to bridge this digital divide by making it easy for parents to access teacher-guided high quality "just-right"(3) English books and Math activities at home, help parents bond with their kids by reading-along together, help English Language Learners learn the correct pronunciations, expose kids to new words, improve the English reading & literacy skills, help struggling readers, and bridge the growing divide between the high and low performers and building a strong foundation for global academic advantage.

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The main KPIs used by the company for measuring progress in the Classroom App are Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), ratio of DAU/MAU, and Daily User Engagement (DUE). Our DUE for Classroom App is 20 minutes. 

The main KPIs used for measuring progress in the B2C App are the number of installs, Daily Active Users (DAU), Monthly Active Users (MAU), Daily User Engagement (DUE), and the rating of our apps.

We also carefully look at all the reviews, testimonials, and feedback received from our users in order to incorporate the relevant comments into our design, upgradation and development of the app. 

Our goals for the next five years are to onboard local implementation partners in Malaysia to implement the Classroom Solution in private and public preschools (Tadika) (Early childhood care and education) ECCE Institutions, starting from Selangor. Percentage of students enrolled in private preschools from 2003 to 2005 in Selangor alone were 68%.

Year 1 goals are to onboard the local partners, equip and train them to provide professional development of teachers on how to use the Classroom Solution effectively as well as training and support for parents. In addition, in the first year we aim to pilot the Classroom Solution in 25-50 Kindergartens in Selangor region.

Once the Classroom Solution is successfully implemented in ECCE in Selangor we plan to scale it both horizontally across the country into other Kindergartens in other regions and vertically to older age/grade levels in elementary and primary schools.

The expected outcomes are improved foundational English literacy skills, phonological awareness, and vocabulary acquisition. It is noteworthy that among factors contributing to choosing private preschools in Malaysia, 71.6 % of participating parents chose English Medium pre-school. Our solution aims to stengthen the foundational skills of English language developement in young children.

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Access to Talent: The biggest challenge is finding the right partner in Malaysia who is well aware of the local Malaysian ECCE and funding landscape and will be able to successfully navigate to the right decision-makers for adopting the Classroom Solution. The profile of the partner could also be an organization in the sector of education that already operates learning centres and can easily coordinate teachers training and professional development in addition to marketing the solution.

Financing: The next barrier is financing that will be required for the implementation, professional development and sourcing of the tablets/devices (if required) for the successful implementation of the Classroom Solution. Financing might also be required for hiring a local project manager.

Technology (Hardware): Though 87.61 percent of the population in Malaysia used a smartphone in 2020, there could be possibilities of some students who do not have access to devices  and would not be able to participate in the digital Classroom Solution because of lack of technology hardware. We will need to find partners in Malaysia who would be willing to source and find the right funding for tablets or devices.

Market Entry: Access to the MOE, other ministries who manage and fund the public pre-schools and other related foundations and organisations is also required for the successful implementation of the solution. We can then use our local partner to execute on the ground.

Smart Kidz Club is a US based digital publisher/EdTech company founded in 2013 with a research-based approach to reading. The company utilizes the disruptive potential of mobile technology to make high quality educational content in English accessible via Android and iOS apps around the world. CEO & founder, Surinder Sharma, is passionate about reading and believes that books have the power to shape and transform lives, especially those of young children. Inspired by the shift toward digital content consumption, lack of reading engagement by kids, and the power and reach of digital technology, she used her experience in publishing and IT to found Smart Kidz Club with a mission to inspire children all around the world to love reading.

Smart Kidz Club launched the Classroom App in 2020 as a response to COVID19 school closures, a solution that connects teachers & students and completely bypasses the need for web based online technology thus helping bridge the digital divide. 

With social impact as an important part of the DNA, Smart Kidz Club has partnered with nonprofits to implement solutions in different countries. In 2020, it launched nationwide access to their app in partnership with the Ministry of Education, Arts & Culture, Namibia sponsored by a local nonprofit. In 2021, the company entered into a five-year partnership with NFL Alumni Association as NFL Alumni's exclusive early education partner for NFL ALUMNI’s Caring for Kids initiatives, working together to promote reading and learning among young children in America.

Our team consists of 4 founders, an advisory board of 8 distinguished experts from related fields. Our tech and content team consists of 6 full-time members. In addition we work on a freelance/contract-basis with several authors, content writers, copyeditors, illustrators and voice artists from around the world.

Rajeev, President Asia Pacific, Solution Lead for Classroom Solution is a strategic business leader with 35 years of experience working with Global MNCs. As an Engineer‒MBA, he has led businesses in the US, China, India, and South East Asia for companies such as P&G, J.M. Huber and C.P. Kelco. His multi-functional experience spans general management & strategy, sales & business development, marketing, innovation and operations. Rajeev works closely with our partners in Asia Pacific to help them implement the solutions in schools and overcome local challenges. He is based in Singapore and an expert in South East Asia market.

Surinder, CEO, has recently been recognized and featured by SuperCharger ventures as one of the incredible and powerful EdTech Female Founders from across the globe. In addition to driving the B2C Apps globally, she has collaborated with local and international non-profits, education departments and ministries of education to enable access for children in rural or remote areas. In 2020, Smart Kidz Club's Namibia Reads app was recognized by UNESCO as Namibia's COVID-19 Education Response National Learning Platform and Tool. Surinder has been selected to present Smart Kidz Club solutions at various international conferences that include mEducation Alliance's Global Education Innovation Symposia. Most recently, she successfully negotiated and entered into a five-year collaboration agreement with NFL Alumni Association to promote reading and learning among young children in America. Surinder works closely with teachers, early education researchers, business partners, nonprofits, ministries to help maximize and promote reading and learning among young children.

In 2010, in his role as Global Operations head, Rajeev conceptualised the idea of a recurring efficiency and cost savings program using 6 sigma methodology. The objective was to deliver annual cost savings of 3% every year based on materials, energy and labour cost reductions as well as an improvement in efficiency of 15-20% over a period of 3 years. The program was resourced by adding a full time team lead in a plant, a support team of 3 part time persons, six sigma training for about 10% of the workforce & required CAPEX investments. It was run as a pilot in 1 highly automated manufacturing plant of 120 people in the US. Thereafter it was scaled up over a period of 3 years to all 3 plants in the US, followed by a total of 12 plants all across the world, impacting a total staff of 900 people. The net result was an annual cost savings of $10-12 Mn every year starting from 2013 as well as plant efficiency improvements from an average of 65% to 82% after 3 years. It was declared a big success in the division and thereafter replicated in other divisions across the entire corporation.    

Here are some of the organizations we have partnered with recently in addition to our distributors and resellers:

1. NFL Alumni Association USA as their exclusive early education partner in their Caring for Kids initiatives. Launched the Kids Read To Read with NFL Alumni App in the United States

2. Foundation for Accessible Children's Education, a NY nonprofit organization to sponsor nationwide Africa Access 2020 in Namibia

3. Ministry of Education Arts and Culture Namibia and Namibia Library and Archive services to launch Namibia Reads and study the efficacy and educational outcomes in primary schools.

4. University of Delaware for research study in Namibia

5. Punjab Education Department, Punjab, India for implementing the Classroom solution in state government public schools under Parho Punjab Parhao Punjab initiative.

6. Patheos Welfare League, nonprofit in Punjab to enable digital access in local rural and semi rural schools.

Partnership with Octava and MIT Solve and the 10-month tailored support program will enable the Classroom Solution to have maximum impact on young learners in Malaysia. Octava and MIT Solve can particularly help us with the following:

1. Mentoring and support on needs assessment. Requirements and challenges in the different types of preschools urban versus rural.

2. Access to the Ministry of Education decision makers to overcome challenges and aid any permissions required to implement the solution.

3. Access to a network of local mentors and coaches across industries and sectors including the government and ministries that can help support and accelerate the impact and scaling of the solution.

4. Access to local nonprofits working with children that could be our potential implementation partners and help apply for local grants.

5. Access to a network of local monitoring and evaluation organizations who can help us measure the outcomes.

6. Access to a network of foundations and philanthropists who can help sponsor the solutions where affordability is an issue.

Smart Kidz Club has a digital solution that can impact the early English literacy and English language development of young children. Being a US based company, we would need local partners who understand the local language, culture, and challenges faced by teachers and parents in implementing this solution successfully. Partnerships that will be necessary for the successful impact of the solution are organizations who can conduct the sales and training, organizations who can conduct monitoring and evaluation, support from local government and agencies to grant permission of use for the solution if required, nonprofits who can apply for grants for preschools who are unable to afford this solution, foundations and philanthropists and social impact investors who can help fund and source tablets and devices for those families who do have access to any hardware/device/smartphone.

EdTech and mobile education, if done right, can be the backbone of the future of education only if supported by the right partners and collaboartion of the government, sponsors, and other support organizations. The goal of accelerating foundational English literacy and numeracy (FLN) in low-resource contexts will remain elusive or confined to limited geographical areas without the support and collaboration of local government and partnerships.