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]