KETKA interactive podcast to develop 21st century skills

WHY: Kids coming from underprivileged backgrounds tend to use more screens and show less social and emotional development. This tendency is also growing in all socio-economical backgrounds. Research shows that social and emotional skills have a major impact life outcome. This impact is only going to increase with the rise of automation. We believe technology should be a link within the family and not something that divides it. Ketka prepare's today's kids for tomorrow's life.

WHAT: Ketka delivers fun, exciting immersive audio-only interactive stories created with structured educational and psychological inputs. Imagine the engaging education quality of Sesame Street with the thrill of Choose Your Own Adventure stories and you're halfway there. Ketka's audio-only stories will help kids grow and develop so that they become more creative, collaborative and confident. We believe learning in a holistic approach to education and mental health. 

Research shows that children coming from disadvantaged backgrounds develop less social and emotional skills in early years(Goodman, Joshi, Nasim, Tyler, 2015). Those skills have got a huge impact on adult life outcome. In the same way, less privileged kids are exposed to roughly 26 million words by age four compared to 45 million for children coming from professional families (Hart, Risley, 2003). This as well as the syntactic differences has got a major impact on their adult life outcome.

A recent publication from the British Education Policy institute (2018) states that it will take over a 100years for children coming from underprivileged backgrounds to catch up with the peers at GCSE level (US 10th grade). And the gap starts at the beginning of school and only widens as years pass. 

We are serving children from 4 to 8 years old with a focus on children coming from less privileged background. The Common sense Census on media use by age for kids from zero to eight years (2017) shows that children coming from the lower income family spend roughly twice as much time on a screen, as their peers coming from higher income families.

The same report states that all parents now spend roughly the same amount on children apps.

We want to leverage that and propose an app-based solution that is using technology and phones or tablets but twists the use to make it collaborative and immersive audio, entertaining and educational.

Our solution is an application proposing interactive stories (like create your own adventure stories) but in immersive audio (no screens).

Stories are crafted with our team of educational specialists, psychologist and psychiatrist, to embed educational (curriculum based) and psychological content. Our focus is literacy, emotional skills and creativity.

Adults or children can choose a story by title but also by skill (empathy, resilience, etc…), subject (friendship, bullying, etc..) or curriculum-based knowledge (adjectives, vocabulary, etc..) or just by age group (4, 5, etc..)

Children can then listen to a story alone or in a group (thus embedding collaborative working) and have to make choices as they go through the story. Selections will be made by using voice only (STT).

Choices within the story are created to have a meaning, embed frameworks and the curriculum. While the use of immersive audio with curated soundscapes allows listeners to create their own mental images and build a theatre of the mind.

At the end of the story, using AI and ML new stories are proposed to improve the outcome.

Based on the choices that have been made through the story, parents/carers/teachers get feedback. This will in the form of “discussion triggers” (as opposed to assessment). Emails or text messages will be sent to parents explaining what story has been listened to, what major choices have been done and the meaning of these choices. Links to relevant research and material will be provided for those who want to deepen their knowledge or understanding of specific points.  

Our aim is to make the app a link within the family and not a divider and to reinforce the communication amongst the family members.

Children have fun in a safe environment but also learn.  Parents are not cut out of it, but can be part of it, either by going through stories together or by having feedback.  

The app can also be used as a bridge between schools and families. 

Our solution is innovative because it uses immersive voice technology with evidence based content (psychological and educational frameworks) to create a unique product at the intersection between entertainment and games/educational app/ mental health and well being.

We use several technologies to make Ketka happen:

We build our interactions on STT to allow kids to make choices without having to use a screen.

We then use AI and ML to create the feedback and the suggestions to improve the outcome.

Our solution addresses the problem in different ways: 

Short term knowledge gain by using the app and listening to stories. 

Our pilots run in schools show a direct impact on knowledge gain outcome; We have run high level A/B tests and kids having listen to stories have learnt and applied the knowledge to choices immediately after listening to stories. So currently we can confirm knowledge impact outcome but we need to run more test on a longer term to confirm behaviour change. 

However building on generic studies made on storytelling our aim is to have a medium term behaviour change.

Our Hypothesis is that by repetitive exposure to stories crafted to improve social and emotional skills and literacy, the long term outcome are improved social and emotional skills as well as creativity.

At present we are serving a small community of 30 children (early stage) of 4 to 8 years old coming from varied socio-economic background.

In a year we are looking at serving over 1000 children and in five years over a million.

For the next year our goals are to launch our beta version and start commercialisation while building our content.

Within the next five years we are planning to expend our offer to other English speaking countries (US, and others) as well as diversify in other languages (Spanish, French). 

We are also looking to grow with the children we are serving and offer ways for them to be creative and create their own stories. But also to have stories that grow with their age and the issues and concerns they might face.

The current barriers are financial. We have been bootstrapping so far and to achieve enough scale and enough content we will be to hire writers as well as voice actors.

We also need to address the technical issues of embedding the STT as well AI on our application. 

We will start a funding round in September once we have more feedback on the current product (tests running over the summer) 

And we are actively trying to recruit a competent CTO to guide us. 

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We are currently 2 full time team (CEO and CCO) and 6 part time (educational specialist, child psychologist, strategy adviser, full stack developer, product adviser, sound designer)

We are the best placed to deliver Ketka, because we are a team of creative entrepreneurs, educational specialists, psychiatrist and child psychologist. Our expertise allows us to combine our strength to create a very unique product. 

We are part of zinc.vc a social impact incubator. We have also been selected by EDUCATE london a UCL incubator embedding research into ed-tech. 

Our business model is a B2B2C ie we leverage schools to get to consumers to gain impact with our ultimate customer being the parents and the beneficiaries being the children from 4 to 8 years old. 

We are looking at a subscription based model with low price points for consumers and state schools. A premium subscription will be available and will provide customised stories embedding names or people or places into the stories (typically private schools or more affluent parents).

Value creation for kids: 

•Development of social emotional skills and creativity

•Engaging, Creative and Fun

•All abilities can go through the same stories (embedded paths for diverse abilities)

Value creation for schools/ childminder:

•Effective learning customisable for curriculum skills

•Comprehensive feedback and suggested paths

•link building with parents through feedback

•Frees time for teacher without being screen based 

alue creation for parents:

•Effective learning customisable for curriculum skills

•Comprehensive feedback and suggested paths

•link building with parents through feedback

•Frees time for teacher without being screen based 

We will be raising a seed round in Q4 2019 and start selling to consumers from Q1 2020. 

Our revenue models are based on 

£4.99/month for B2C ($6.34)

£0.5/child/month for basic school subscription ($0.6)

£1.5/child/month for the customised school subscription ($1.9)

We are applying at Solve for several reasons: 

1. we believe our views are similar in wanting to have an impact and make sure we can use technology to create a better word.

2. Our approach is very much cross subject including tech, psychology, education, sounds etc.. and we believe solve MIT is uniquely positioned to help us develop and bring us the help, and mentorship that would enable our growth. 

3. we are keen to embed localism in our stories (in content and form -voices) and make sure Ketka is part of a community.

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We want to partner with several organisation including:

MIT teaching and learning lab, 

the life long kindergarden 

early childhood cognition lab

Ketka's solution is based on ML and AI use to analyse the choices made within the stories and make suggestions to improve the outcome. We would also need AI to understand what part of the stories have got a major impact so as to influence the creation of new content. 

In a second stage we would also need to use AI to customise the some part of the stories and copy the voice actor's voice to make it more personal to children. 

our team is composed of a large majority of women: CEO, CCO, education specialist, full stack developer and product adviser. So out of 7 we are 5 women of various ages, backgrounds ans nationalities and therefore we are very keen to embed our values of diversity and women promotion.

So if we won the prize we would make sure we develop stories that empower girls and women and promote the feminine condition.

Our solution is using both AI and is about early education, however our first operation is based in the UK .  We will only be able to reach the US in a few month. The innospark ventures prize would allow us to reach the US earlier.