catalinvoss

Totally agree that we should expose kids to the great classics and I love Pipi Langstrumpf as I grew up to know her. The challenge is often that these books aren’t the best to learn to read with, because they don’t have decodable words. So you’ll want a mix: windows into the works of great literature appropriately scaffolded and ways to explore your own curiosity. But see Elizabeth’s reply below for much better depth.

Sorry — we had to step away to put our kids to bed, but this post has really blown up! not able respond to every comment right now but just wanted to say one thing: we've been working on this problem for over 5 years now, and our team has witnessed how transformative technology can be when set up correctly to change a child who has fallen behind back up to par, and at times even exceed their peers, in very short periods of time.

Ello 1.0, our reading product that isn’t fully agentic but incorporates extensive use of AI, is already in the homes of tens of thousands of happy families, and every day we continue be be blown away by the messages we receive from our customers for whom Ello has been able to meaningfully impact. We know there's some skepticism on how AI will evolve over time, but we've been witness to how impactful technology can when done right can be. This is why we think it's even more important that we try to get this right, than to simply rule it off the technology because it's AI.

If you want to read up on some reviews from the families using the current version of Ello, you can take a look here: https://www.reviews.io/company-reviews/store/ello

Ello will have a free tier and we have the funding to make it free in the developing world, so 3rd assumption is true. We’re working really hard on 1 & 2 and feel confident about both of these, but I agree with the “nobody’s really successfully tried yet” sentiment

And fully free in emerging markets, beginning in Africa

Yeah totally. Here's a video that shows some parts of the experience: https://x.com/CatalinVoss/status/2074527066926776802?s=20

The long and short of it: We use AI to scaffold in the moment and respond to what a child is struggling with or excited by. At times, we allow them to follow their curiosity and at times we guide them through a curriculum. At times, we get them to do both of those things, e.g. you can make a book about a topic you're interested in and then take that curious drive to ultimately learn to decode words using phonics and practice reading skills. There is time for what our learning designers call "productive struggle" and then there's time to jump in and support.

Under the hood, there are activities and learning objectives designed by experts and a teaching toolkit that distills everything they know about how to effectively teach kids across several subjects. A real-time planner then decides what to apply when. Without this interactivity, you pretty much get static content delivery and gameplay which is what traditional edtech delivers. With it, you can find the shortest path to getting the "ahhhh I get it now" moment.

There's also a bit more context on our website https://www.ello.com/our-teaching-approach

Yeah – this is hard stuff. If we're successful in getting the this right, our users won't be feeling any of the complexity.

I was that same 5 year old. I do think that if we want AI to force-multiply humanity, we need to start leveraging it for education. I think it's one of the biggest levers we have to be honest

Human tutor is definitely the best thing we could do, but it’s not attainable to give every child a human tutor and clearly the current system isn’t working. If you manage to build a good AI tutor, you can unlock more human interaction outside of self-directed learning time

we = a team of teachers, AI experts, child psychologists, learning designers, and parents; building in the US and Kenya

I get where you're coming from. There’s a lot of potential to misuse AI with kids.

What we do believe is that children will be living in a world where this technology will exist, and how it gets used becomes the important question.

We also have to prepare them for that world and how to thrive in it. I would never give my son raw ChatGPT the same way you wouldn’t give a 5 year old access to the raw internet. But that doesn’t mean that the internet can’t be used for learning.

We don’t have all the answers and we can’t respond for all of AI, but we’re a team of parents, teachers, and child psychologists who deeply care about getting this right and unlocking the opportunities for kids. The article goes into the technical depth of how we make it pedagogically aligned, safe, non-slop.

Business model is interesting BTW. We’re a public benefit company and are planning to make our products completely free in emerging markets and have a free tier in the US. Impact and business should be aligned here, but pulling in opposite corners.

Agree that kids benefit from more human interaction, not less. That's our goal.

The reality though is that the traditional school setting doesn't provide for that: a teacher in front of a 30 kid classroom can't cater to every child and it's not a particularly interactive experience. The current system just isn't working: 60% of US fourth-graders are behind in reading, 40% lack basic literacy. Those kids are going to move on to the next phase of school without the skills to thrive.

There are 270 mil kids out of school globally. So what are you going to do? Give every child a 1-1 human tutor? For sure, if you can, that’s amazing. But you can't pull that off. You don't have enough teachers.

Technology gives us the opportunity to catch kids up. By doing that, you can decouple teaching hard skills and free up teachers to focus on the things that are truly human and unlock a lot more people who may not have the skills to teach the full curriculum themselves to act as learning facilitators. That leads to more human interaction.

Yes! Deeply admire what Sal Khan set out to do. One of the original pioneers of how technology could transform education.

What we learnt from it: a chatbot is not enough to teach a child though. We need more to fully engage them and have the tools and context to truly teach them.

We describe this in the blog post, curious what you think.

We agree with this sentiment. Our goal is to supplement children with effective learning, NOT replace humans.

This article can provide a little more context on how we're thinking about this:

https://www.ello.com/blog/ai-should-make-clear-what-reality-...

We started with reading, providing patient coaching as kids learn to read out loud. We are now adding math and in some countries, English as a Second Language.

Students actually aren't as homogenous as you might think. And it's one of the big challenges teachers have with a classroom of 25+. They're forced to teach to the middle, which isn't great for kids that are slightly behind or ahead.

An AI tutor has the advantage to adapt and teach to each child's unique learning path, make sure core concepts are covered on an individual basis before moving on.

Hey HN! We've spent the good part of this past year building an AI tutor that teaches kids ages 4-9 reading, math, ESL and more. Getting an AI tutor to effectively teach a child turns out to be a really hard technical challenge, this took getting the underlying architecture right.

Our tutor steers the UX in real-time and makes complex decisions on the fly. Doing both at conversation speed required us to replace the standard tool-use loop. We built our own tutor harness that utilizes a streaming interpreter that executes actions, while an asynchronous planner model reasons ahead of the conversation and makes calls that drive the child's learning. On top of it all, we developed a safety system that checks every turn without it causing an interruption to the activity and conversation flow.

Effective teaching isn't just about answering a child's question quickly, rather making the right move at the right moment. AI is also going to be an integral part shaping how this generation of kids learn to read and think, tackling this responsibly means getting the design right.

Happy to answer questions and curious what you all think, critical feedback included, we've been working on this problem for a long time and love to hear from the HN community.