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Sesame Street leverages augmented reality to teach children vocabulary

Sesame Street has launched a new mobile application that leverages augmented reality to let children learn new vocabulary words by scanning printed food-related words on real-world objects.

?Big Bird?s Words? lets children find, identify and learn about new words in a fun way that bridges the real and digital worlds. The app uses Qualcomm Vuforia?s real-time text recognition capability to enable children to use a smartphone?s camera to identify the new words.

?There are two main strategies [behind Big Bird?s Words],? said Betsy Loredo, executive editor of publishing at Sesame Workshop, New York. ?One is that we?ve been looking at the same statistics that everybody had and seen that there was this enormous growth in phones when compared to tablets for instance, that mobile phones are enormously popular, and that they are accessible to the audience that Sesame Street wants to support. 

?Then we were looking at augmented reality and is there some way that can be used for education,? she said. ?It was a way for us to reach the largest population of kids. Kids when they?re on the move and when many of their other options are games that have no educational content to them at all.

?The other strategy behind this is we?ve been hearing all the disturbing statistics that there is this vocabulary gap, that children entering school with the vocabulary gap never make it up later on in their education. We were trying to think is there something we can do to help close that gap to provide a tool for those children to use this digital media to get exposed to more words to get them to understand what it means.?

Big Bird?s words
The app is available for $0.99 in Apple?s App Store and Google Play.

When children open the app, they are greeted by Big Bird, who asks them to help Cookie Monster find the items on his grocery list. They have to find the five items on the list and drag them to the ?Word-O-Scope?.

Then Big Bird asks them to find the words in the real world and to scan them with their phone. When a child finds the word ?milk," for instance, Big Bird congratulates them on finding the word and then teaches them some related words, such as goat, cereal and farmer.

Parents can also order free emailable word labels to put on items in the pantry and fridge so that their children can scan the words. They can also request game ideas.

For the best results, the printed words should contain letters of the same color, in a straight line and on a flat surface.

Big Bird?s Words recognizes 1,500 words, 500 of which it recognizes verbally. This means that if Big Bird asks a child to find milk, and the child scans the word cookie, Big Bird will be able to recognize the word and say, ?You found a cookie, but we are looking for milk.?

For the 1,000 words that the app does not recognize verbally, Big Bird will simply say, ?You found another word but not milk.?

Mobile education
Big Bird?s Words is meant to give children a deeper understanding of new vocabulary words while getting a better appreciation for the context of the word. It also fosters a better association of words with pictures and real-world objects.

According to Sesame Street, preschoolers who were exposed to Big Bird?s Words had a 40 percent increase in their ability to identify the target words.

Sesame Workshop has been invested in mobilizing childhood education for a while.

In March, the company launched an Elmo app that helps children between the ages of 2-6 build memory and organizational skills (see story).

Last year Sesame rolled out a Cookie Monster app to help children helps build visual identification and observation skills (see story).

?I?ve worked on a number of apps and with every single one of our products we work with our research team to make sure that we?re supporting one of the show?s curriculum goals and we?re creating something that will have appositive impact on children and also does tell whatever story we want to tell in a way that children can fundamentally understand,? Ms. Loredo said. ?Big Bird?s Words, that teamwork was so intertwined, there was no step we took without research advice, and that was a real joy for everyone on the team.

?One of the things we did to truly understand if we were reaching those goals is we conducted a test in Idaho for two weeks, and what happened was the leaders were provided with phones, a minimum amount of instructions, because we wanted to see if families could use this,? she said.

?They used it in their classroom for two weeks. The control group was given standard material. At the end, there was a statistically significant increase in knowledge of vocabulary, and that was so gratifying for us.?

Final Take
Rebecca Borison is editorial assistant on Mobile Marketer, New York