Touchable Earth

How can we make learning more inclusive and equitable, while improving outcomes for all learners?

For learning to be inclusive and equitable it needs to come from a diverse range of voices. 

We address this by having the world taught by kids living in the place being learned about. 

This improvement doesn't come at the expense of any learner - each has a better outcome.  The child teaching feels their culture or experience is valued and the learner taught gains an understanding and empathy for how someone their age lives. 

Our view (based on creating over 1000 videos around the world in schools) is that elementary aged kids are the best place to focus on this - they are at an age where they are curious, not self conscious, and most open to ideas. 

Children are programmed through educational resources from day 1. 

In the 1980s (when founder Tudor Clee was in elementary school) everything from math problems to geography lessons were exclusively presented with males as the protagonists.  That was 'normal'. 

Touchable Earth is taught in equal numbers by boys and girls. This plants the seed that ideas can be imparted by girls. While this sounds an odd thing to say the example above shows that wasn't always the case even recently in an apparently pro women country (New Zealand).

Again, no learner has a worse outcome from this approach. 

The problem of diverse voices is far from solved. The AI revolution is likely going to set it back.

AI only works with the content available to it. Given the vast majority of educational content is barely gender equal, let alone culturally or identity equal, it risks continuing the historical narrative.

As such - we view making learning more inclusive an equitable as being firmly based on human connection.  We promote technology as a means to promote that inclusive connection rather than to replace. it. 

As the world becomes more connected there will still be a fundamental requirement to communicate across culture/gender/identity and these are skills that need to be learned rather than replaced. 

Touchable Earth is the first web app where kids teach kids about the world. 

Over 1000 elementary aged kids teach one thing about how they live in a first person 20 second video. Topics include family, school, play, and culture. 

An equal number of videos are taught by girls as boys. 

Source:

The videos are all professionally shot by us in collaboration with schools in 20 countries. 

Language:

The videos are in whichever language the child chooses and then subtitled. Some kids present in English and their own language. 

Delivery:

Touchable Earth is a web app using these videos. 

It provides curriculum aligned learning journeys, interactive quizzes, and classroom resources. 

Teachers save time in lesson planning and improve student attention through engaging content. 

A teacher can drop a whole lesson into their LMS, or if they already have a lesson they can add in just our videos and photos from the content library.

Teachers can use the clips in across topics in geography, social studies, languages, history, music. 

Technical info:

The videos run off Vimeo. The web app itself uses nextjs +tailwind for the framework and frontend, Strapi for CMS, Postgresql for database

Roadmap:

We have feedback that it helps learn English as you hear so many different accents of kids speaking English.  Adding functionality to that is on the roadmap. 

Every single child can benefit from Touchable Earth.

There is no limit on how much a child can know about their world. 

In a broader sense we are targeting learning and sharing.

The combination of these is teaching children that a global dialogue is just that - global - and that each voice has validity no matter where it is from. 

This empathy and open mindedness is a critical skill to identify and address global problems in an increasingly connected world. 

Learning:

Classrooms anywhere.  There is virtually no locally created content available on communities around the world shot from a child's perspective.  Teaching is predominantly 'about' the lives of other children or communities rather than 'with' them. 

No child in the world 'knows enough' or would not benefit from exposure to more world views. 

Children using Touchable Earth have often not even heard of the place they are learning about because they simply aren't featured in mainstream teaching material. 

Teaching:

We give a voice and presence to under served communities. We do this in a uniquely positive way.  

Our solution puts their stories and perspective into the hands of children around the world promoting recognition and interest in places that are often totally absent from textbooks or media. 

We started off with no proximity to the community we are serving. Founder Tudor Clee had no kids, had few friends with kids and small extended family.

That meant the original sets of content didn't really give kids credit for how much they knew and the quality of their thoughts and ideas.

It has been learning on the job, accepting our mistakes, and adapting which makes the team well positioned. Each chapter we filmed was richer than the previous.

Under new Director, Giota Kalogirou, there is a renewed focus on ensuring the technology to deliver the content is world class.  Giota lived and studied in 4 continents before she was 18.  She has direct knowledge of how schools in different places teach about the world. 

We have a female led multicultural team, Greek, Russian, Indian, New Zealand Māori, Irish.  We have fostered relationships with teachers around the world to give us feedback on the content and programs.  

The program is fundamentally based on the input of communities. We design around what comes out of that. When creating content we were increasingly careful and cognisant of the importance of letting communities tell us what was important to share and letting them do it. Again this is something we learnt along the way to ensure the kids have creative freedom. 

This should be answered in respect of the 'previous' version and 'new' version.

The previous version ran off YouTube in a Khan academy format or was distributed with Kolibri to low bandwidth areas.  This resulted in around 100k users split between Kolibri, the website and an early app. This would suggest the growth phase.

The new version is in Pilot stage - we know the core content is in demand from the 'previous' version - but the way we present it, now far more engaging and useable in the classroom, is in the early pilot stage with select teachers testing the features. 

We want more children using the program.

Achieving that primary relies on innovation.  We are an NGO but we don't want to raise funds from the public. If we have a great product that people want and will pay for (while sticking to our values) then everything will work itself out. 

Our core concept is simple - kids teaching kids - but the ways to do so are evolving and are potentially limitless. We hope to engage with Solve to be at the cutting edge of technology to assist us in delivering the solution to the largest number of kids in the most engaging way. 

Touchable Earth is about kids teaching kids about the world.

While our solution is innovative it is actually incredibly simple. 

Virtually all educational material presently available is an adult perspective teaching about the world. 

Secondary teaching material from the media is generally overwhelming negative. 

These legacy approaches are unlikely to foster curiosity, empathy, or any desire to learn more (or visit) other places. 

We anticipate a broader positive response as the children who learn from Touchable Earth grow up and have the ability to independently visit the places they learned about.  

Our business model is innovative. We are an NGO but have set out to compete in the ed tech market based on the quality of the program so that we can fulfil our social purpose.  This may encourage other NGOs to look at a quality commercial model to address funding to lessen the reliance on donations.

The concept of Touchable Earth came from founder Tudor Clee remembering how curious he was when he was 10 and how seeing Roger Milla, Captain of the Cameroon Football team, at the 1990 World Cup. 

Through the 1980s the only images of Africa available on TV were of war or famine.  Roger Milla was charismatic and exciting (google Roger Milla dance).   Tudor made a scrapbook of the newspaper articles about him. It planted the seed of curiosity to travel.  22 years later Tudor set out to make 100s or 1000s of Roger Milla's who could show their communities in a positive and inspirational way.  In 2016 Tudor travelled to Cameroon and met Roger Milla, presenting him a book about Touchable Earth, and explaining the impact he had that has, over 20 years later, flourished into a UN Award winning education program. 

So the reality is - it is impossible to predict the impact of sharing perspectives or breaking stereotypes. It may be decades before the true impact is know but we anticipate many positive examples in the short term.

An example from a school in Virginia was a 'before and after' of what the kids knew about a place.  The 'before' included some bizarre and shocking stereotypes, and the 'after' a focus on what the life of a child was like relative to theirs. 

The class then did an internal Touchable Earth where kids shot videos of themselves and their family in our format. The teacher advised that a student who was shy and bit left out in class ended up making hilarious videos about his Mexican family and it changed the dynamic of his relationships within the classroom. 

At this stage the impact goals are user based.

We had a goal for q1 2024 to have teachrs/admins responsible for 50,000+ kids sign up on our waitlist. We achieved that the first week of April 2024.

Our next goal is to have 100,000 active users by q3 2024 on the new web app. Given the response so far with very little marketing we consider this achievable. 

This will allow us to invest in our free program through existing platforms (Kolibri, Vodafone Foundation) and new ones like UNICEF. We presently have around 50,000 users of the free program in a basic format.If we translate to Spanish we are looking to increase that to 100k plus users by the end of 2024. 

The next stage is content based. 

We are looking to film new content starting q3 and are currently planning which communities to add next. 

Finally we need to determine how to measure success and progress. 

The new version will have better analytics so we can measure how the students are using the web app, how they respond to questions/quizzes etc.. 

We don't have a definition or quantification yet of what success is beyond the user numbers or positive feedback. Determining that definition is complex and is the sort of issue we hope to have assistance from SOLVE. 

The basic technology is video. 

It is about seeing and hearing a child your age.

The advanced technology is now we can share that video in an infinitely repeatable and scaleable way.

Touchable Earth then makes the video itself more interesting, such as interactivity, and educational, with the ability to easily include it in a lesson plan. 

As mentioned before we use nextjs +tailwind for the framework and frontend, Strapi for CMS, Postgresql for the database.

Full time: 6

Director (Boss)

Product Manager

Learning Designer

Chief Technology Officer

Software developer

Social Media/Coms

Part time: 2

Graphic designer (20 hours per week)

Trustee/CTO

Contractors: 4

Software Developer 

Product testers x 2

Writer (email marketing/content)

The organization started in 2012 and launched the first App Store app in December 2012.

The core content remained the same but the delivery structure changed and since 2017 was a standalone web app running off YouTube with a basic navigation.

The 'new' web app started development in September 2023. 

Our leadership team is:

Director - female Greek

Product manager - female Russian

CTO - Male Māori New Zealander

CFO/Trustee - Male New Zealander 

The rest of the staff are:

Russian, female and male

Chinese Australian male

Indian New Zealand male and two females

Irish female

New Zealand female.

We are family friendly (two of leadership team have toddlers). Everyone who works with us are there because they live the values that we promote which is empathy and tolerance of gender, culture, and identity.  Our team includes LGBTQ+ members. 

We are a non profit registered in New Zealand.

We have provided the solution free already to over 100,000 students around the world. 

Our business model is to charge users in the global north for the web app to fund development of the resources and allow us to continue to provide it free otherwise.

To have a product that people are willing to pay for required us to invest in learning development and technology.  

We provide the web app on a teacher licence, school licence, or district with pricing and service depending on the size of the contract.  As an example the per student use for a year is less than $10.  

This price point raised concerns about the quality of the product. We reiterate that we are a non profit and have a requirement/duty to ensure it is accessible to as many children as possible. 

We have focused initially on the UK market with email campaigns. We have teachers/schools with over 50,000 students who have signed up for the waitlist. 

Our rollout requires us to tune the program to the curriculum of each market we enter. This is presently focused on UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

From when we started the concept in September 2023 to present we have invested around $150,000 in development. 

The funding is solely through the founder Tudor Clee and his law practice. 

The team is lean and efficient and we have acted like a bootstrapped startup. 

In developing the new version we conducted research with teachers using the 'old' version, met with teachers and administrators while exhibiting at BETT UK (largest education event in UK), used direct email marketing to 1000s of teachers in the UK with professional service.  We then implemented a type form page to learn about the teachers interested in the product. 

The interest has been huge indicating there is gap in the market for non AI and non cartoonified content about the world. 

From a practical point of view the feedback told us that teachers want to save time in the classroom and have more engaging content. 

Those principles drive the product development. 

Everyday we have teachers/admins with an anywhere from 200-1000 students signing up for the waitlist indicating a lot of interest in the product. 

A competitor analysis found several companies making resources e.g. on China, that include 3 lesson plans, non original photos and videos, and cost $10 for a student.  In comparison for the same price we offer 100s of lesson plans on over 20 different communities with original content created specifically for children by children. 

We anticipate being profitable by q3 2024 as well as being able to build out our team to ensure the quality of the education resource and classroom technology is world class.