I was watching an episode of Dragons’ Den and Lowell MacPhee & Joelle MacPhee were on pitching Ooka Island Adventure. Ooka Island Adventure is an online educational web site designed to increase literacy skills for children.
99% of the “educational” web sites out there use the standard “do section 1 and when you pass, move to section 2”, so on and so on. This is fine for most kids but my wife and I know from from personal experience that some kids just don’t learn properly from the standard methods. My wife and I have 5 kids and 4 of them learned how to read without much issue but for 1 son, it was worst than pulling teeth. He would be on section 20 of a web site or book and say “I don’t know what they are talking about” and my wife would say “you did that in section 12 last week”. He would then (if the web site would allow it) redo section 12, “pass it” and go back to section 20 but the next day we would go through the same problem with another issue. The problem was that he was passing the sections but “not learning” the concepts. It was years and YEARS of a lot of frustration getting him to learn how to read.
So, what does my son’s issues have to do with Ooka Island Adventure? Well, they claim that their software uses “adaptive learning algorithm” and this is what caught my attention. They claim that no 2 children go on the same path in learning how to read using their software. If true, children with difficulty learning how to read could greatly improve using Ooka Island Adventure (and parents wouldn’t go crazy during the process).
Note: I am not affiliated or any way associated with Ooka Island Adventure and what I know of it is from the episode of Dragons’ Den.
Food for thought for parents with children having trouble learning how to read.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
