Ello's AI Teacher for Kids

The pandemic has brought negative impacts affecting various parties, which include kids and students who had to study online with uneven access to proper education.

According to Tiffany P. Hogan, director of the Speech and Language Literacy Lab at the MGH Institute of Health Professions in Boston, the pandemic caused more students to be at high risk of reading problems. This learning inefficiency in the education sector encouraged plenty of companies to incorporate AI with hopes of improving children's literacy and learning process.

This includes Ello, a YC-backed startup founded by Elizabeth Adams, Tom Sayer, and Catalin Voss, which has created a subscription-based service along with an AI-powered app that assists children in reading at home.

Studying with AI

The idea of studying with AI has become very much known and familiar. More and more people are using ChatGPT to assist them in their studies, and the chatbot has even become a replacement for tutors for plenty of high schoolers.

Educators have grown aware that children need assistance in their studies and have leveraged AI for several uses in the process. Some educators and companies are using AI to power interactive games that teach basic academic skills or create assistive technology that helps read passages to visually impaired students.

AI has also made education more inclusive and easily accessible. AI tools can provide education to students who speak different languages or might have visual or hearing impairments. AI can also be helpful for students who might not be able to attend school due to illness, for example.

Ello addresses the specific need for improvements in students’ reading abilities with its AI technology that practically enables 1:1 effective tutoring for kids, improving their learning process from home.

Reading for Studies and Fun

Ello’s goal hinges on providing better speech perception in children. Since children learn by talking, Ello’s founders, who are experienced in the fields of education, child development and psychology, and artificial intelligence, find natural language technology as the best interface for young kids to interact with.

Ello’s subscription-based service, which is aimed at kids from kindergarten through Grade 3, comprises a tablet app with an AI reading coach that parents can download and five physical books delivered to the client’s house for children to read every month.

The Ello app acts as a learning companion with a UI designed to center on the children’s interests and needs. The app asks about the children’s interests, whether it be animals, arts & crafts, or science, and reading experts then hand-select books to deliver based on the answers.

As children read alongside the app, the reading coach continuously listens to and analyzes the children’s speeches to correct any mispronunciations and missed words and teach them critical reading skills. Children are also taught to start being proactive and aware of their needs by tapping on a question mark if they want any extra help.

The speech recognition technology integrated into the Ello app is trained to work across different demographics so the app can easily adjust to various learning processes based on the child’s ethnicities, ages, genders, and any specific learning needs.

Ello’s founders started Ello as a service that focuses on child development in a more general sense. After meeting hundreds of parents, however, the founders learned that illiteracy is one of the issues the pandemic has brought upon young children. This pushed the trio to develop Ello into the service it is now, with a firm belief that children should be at the center of the learning process.

Said belief is what makes Ello different from other education technology. Instead of focusing on assessments and progress markers, Ello centers on creating a learning process that is engaging and enjoyable for children, with hopes of creating a future filled with confident and independent kids who love reading.

The company claims that 10,000 families use Ello, and over 300,000 books have been read by children on the app. Though the app is only available on the tablet at the moment, the company has plans to launch a mobile app as well.

The company recently secured $15 million in its Series A funding led by Goodwater Capital, which will be used to further develop Ello and expand its access to customers, one way by creating versions in other languages. Reed Hastings, Common Sense Growth, Homebrew, and Ravensburger also participated in the funding round.

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