Can a voiceinteractive toy robot transform education

[Music]

[Applause]

a few years ago

my son cal was a happy four-year-old

little boy

who loved school so much that when he

got a pet fish

he decided to name it after his teacher

mr barr

then one day mr barr left and the

teacher that replaced him

didn’t have the same tools or training

to relate to cal

happy grams turned into nasty grams

which ultimately turned into

this voicemail hi dawn um i didn’t

cal most of the day today and he is

totally out of control

disrespectful disobedient i need you to

come and get him and he is not going to

return

i hope you understand thank you bye

in that moment i felt as if i just

failed

at the one thing i care most about being

a great dad

it reminded me of the time that i was in

school and let cal

on my way out years ago i stumbled into

normandale community college

when i couldn’t get a job at a fast food

restaurant

when you show up to school the day

before classes start

you get all the courses that no one else

wants for me that was

chemistry in my second semester i had

chemistry with dr

reznicek and i finally landed that job

except this restaurant had real napkins

and real silverware so

the obvious thing to do was to drop out

then one day dr razencheck asked to see

me after class

i spent the entire period trying to

figure out what i had done wrong

when i approached him he handed me a

piece of paper

i looked at it it was my exam i’d gotten

75 out of 100.

so i asked what’s the problem

and he looked at me through glasses that

only chemistry teachers wear

and said i’d like to see you get 100.

that’s all he said but that’s not all i

heard

i heard delon you can do this you have

the ability

and i care so for the rest of the

semester i tried to get 100

and although i never actually got a

perfect score

i stayed in school nearly doubled my gpa

and eventually graduated from harvard so

even though i had no idea

what was going on with cal or how to be

helpful

i had to get 100 because this time it

wasn’t just personal

it was paternal in education there’s a

saying that a parent is a child’s first

teacher

so i tried to become the best teacher

that i could be

i immersed myself in the research on

what kids need to succeed

and how to develop it i met with experts

i read papers i took classes i spent a

lot of time in classrooms and i learned

a lot from teachers

the deeper i went the more i realized

that our education system

is broken and i wasn’t sure if it was

fixable

in fact i felt that if we took all of

the science on child development and

then just

did the opposite it would more closely

resemble

u.s education what if changing education

was as simple as learning how to play

i’m going to share with you how voice

technology and more specifically a voice

interactive toy

has the potential to change the

conversation on how kids learn

there are three big problems in

education

the first is that we’re not focused on

the most important period of development

the first eight years of life are

critical it’s when we start to build our

social emotional

language and cognitive skills however

for every dollar that we spend on k-12

education

we only spend about a nickel on early

education

to put that into context 90 of the brain

is formed before kindergarten

but more than 90 of funding comes after

it not surprisingly we have one of the

lowest rates of early childhood

education the second big problem is that

we’re not focused on the most important

skills

although science and technology and math

are incredibly important

the skills that often lead to success in

school and beyond

are things like empathy self-control

creativity

grit a growth mindset basically all of

the skills that you hear about in ted

talks

but that we rarely focus on in schools

and the last problem has to do with how

we engage kids cal’s not the first kid

to be called disobedient

and i’m not gonna be the last student to

think that they’re in trouble when

a teacher wants to meet that’s my point

we often focus on teaching kids to be

obedient and to follow directions

than on actually inspiring them to learn

i believe technology has to play a role

but if we’re being honest most

technology wasn’t designed for early

learners

touch interfaces aren’t natural rigid

form factors

aren’t playful and visual content often

overstimulates kids rather than engaging

them

in fact i’d contend most technology is

not only not helping

it’s actually exacerbating the problems

let me explain why

when kids lack access to school they

gain access to something else

screens although the american academy of

pediatrics

recommends kids under six to spend no

more than one hour

per day in front of a screen the average

young child spends almost three hours

per day

in front of them and when schools close

due to covid screen time more than

double so why is excessive screen time

such a big problem well do you remember

that psa from the 1980s that showed what

our brains look like

on drugs well this is a kid

this is a kid on a screen and this is

what

kids brains look like on screens

in the blue are the neural pathways

associated with language

and literacy think of them as our

information highways

that we want to be focused and organized

on the left you see the brain of a

preschooler who is often read to

and on the right is the brain of a

preschooler who spends a couple hours

per day in front of a screen

as you can see the brain on the left is

far more organized and focused

than the brain on the right it’s much

more sporadic

the truth is we don’t have a practical

scalable way to reach kids where they’re

at

which is often at home without a screen

the other issue is that

kids don’t build social skills by

pushing buttons

or self-control by staring at screens

these are all developed through back and

forth interaction

and by modeling behavior so they’re hard

to build and they’re hard to scale

the bottom line is that most technology

is not only impractical

during the most important period of

development but it’s also impractical

for developing the most important skills

and screens aren’t just affecting kids

the average adult spends

almost 10 hours per day in front of a

screen

whether we like it or not adults are

always teaching

because kids are always learning if

we’re serious about changing education

we’re gonna have to change our behavior

but how do we do it

how do we engage young kids that are

hard to reach

help them build skills that are

difficult to teach and how do we help

adults

to practice what we preach

what if we replaced screen time with

speech

kids don’t learn to read until around

age six but they can speak in sentences

by age three

a few years ago voice technology like

alexa was just starting to take off

and cal literally dreamed about playing

with toys

so i thought if i could combine voice

technology

in the form factor of a plush toy

every child could learn in a safe

natural

and scalable way this is what it looked

like

and this is cal working on his letter

blends

new stone and story start with the

letters as c

or s h

easy peasy lemon squeezy 10 in a row

way to go

cal loved it and i love that you could

see his wheels really turning

we even started winning awards in fact

the letter game that you just saw won

the grand prize

in the alexa ed tech challenge so

effectively i developed a smart toy

that could engage young kids that are

hard to reach

so then i wanted to know could we help

kids build

skills that are difficult to teach you

saw cal working on his early literacy

skills and so i wanted to know

could we help kids build social

emotional skills like empathy

the best example that i’ve ever seen to

help kids build empathy is jane

elliott’s

blue eyes brown eyes experiment in 1968

she

separated her third grade class by eye

color

and she told the kids with blue eyes

that they were smarter and would get

special privileges

pretty soon the kids with blue eyes

teased the other kids

and then they all stopped playing

together and then she reverse roles

and gave the other kids privileges and

by the end every child knew exactly what

it was like

to be teased for being different

i have a secret robots don’t have

feelings

or empathy so i thought if i could

create an interactive experience where

kids could teach the robot what it’s

like to be a kid or how it feels

to be different we might help them build

perspective

which is the root of empathy now let me

share

with you some perspective on what it’s

like to be a seven-year-old with two

younger

i love being brothers years old because

every day i learn something new

i also get free admission to the terrain

museum

i’m curious how old are you

seven

wow you are so old what’s it like to be

seven

it’s like you have to be the leader of

everything

by empowering kids to play the role of

teacher i realized we could help kids

build

social skills executive function skills

almost anything

in fact i even created a cleanup game

where kids could

teach the robot what it’s like to clean

up which

comes in really handy when you’ve got

three young kids at home

more importantly it no longer relied

just on

artificial intelligence but relied on

something greater

human intelligence and emotional

intelligence

more importantly we have a way to engage

young kids

that are hard to reach help them build

skills that are difficult to teach

and so then i wondered can we help

adults to practice

what we preach because kids have

zero chance at reaching their full

potential without support of adults

although we all want kids to be

successful the real question is

how do we become the best teachers that

our kids

need us to be

by talking one of the most commonly

cited studies in the history

of education research is hart and

risley’s study on early language

environments it’s what led to the

so-called word gap it turns out that

it’s

less about how many words kids are

exposed to and much more about engaging

them

in rich back and forth conversation and

responsive

language like you could see in the

videos this isn’t hard

but it does take practice let’s think

why is it so important that we talk with

kids

and not at them i want you to imagine

that you’re a four-year-old

and you’re constantly being told to stop

be quiet sit down would that change how

you feel about

learning kids will

often forget what we say at least my

kids do

but they will never forget how we make

them feel

it took me almost 20 years to realize

why dr resin chuck

could change my trajectory in one

conversation

and it has to do with something called

self-determination theory

and it’s the most important thing that

i’ve learned about human development

basically kids learn best when they feel

three things

when they feel competent like they’re

successful

when they have agency or control over

their development

and most importantly when they feel

loved

it’s really easy to label kids problems

these days cal was never the problem

in fact cal or c-a-l

was actually the solution because

helping kids feel competent

giving them agency and showing them love

is exactly

how we inspire them to love learning and

you may even get a fish named after you

too

now of course you don’t need a voice

interactive toy to do this but it can

help

and here’s why when kids play the role

of teacher

they feel competent when kids are

guiding play whether by themselves or

with others

they have agency and when adults learn

to model

conversational turn-taking and

responsive language

they feel loved so it started out

as a kid’s toy has now also become an

adult

toy but we’ll call it an educational

tool so nobody gets in trouble

more importantly you can see how a voice

interactive toy

or tool can engage young kids that are

hard to reach

help them build skills that are

difficult to teach and even help us big

kids

to practice what we preach while getting

kids excited about learning again

our education system has been failing

many kids for far too long

technology is not going away but it can

be

invisible voice technology has the

potential to change education

by helping kids play to learn while

adults

learn to play although play is one of

the

first things that we all learn how to do

we often forget how to play

as we get older if we want to change

education

we all need to relearn how to play let

me close with a story about a superhero

her name is mrs nagle and she was cal’s

next teacher

when she realized that cal loved coins

and was good at math

she created a coin counting game just

for him and he looked forward to it

every single day although it wasn’t easy

she hand sewed cow’s little heart right

back together by helping him feel

competent

giving him agency and she loved him and

we loved her

pretty soon cal was back to feeling like

cal again

no technology can ever replace the role

of a supportive adult

but even superheroes need help and

that’s the role that a voice interactive

toy

can play thank you

[Applause]