Education Talk Radio

Ellen Ullman: Hello and welcome to EDU Talk Radio on the BE Podcast Network.

It's a show with a fresh point of view on what's next in learning and technology.

I am your new host, Ellen Allman, and today Marks the start of a new chapter for the podcast.

For the first episode of this reboot, I'm delighted to be joined by Jim Margrave, a true pioneer in EdTech.

Jim founded Kabe and is the mind behind game changing innovations like Leapfrog's LeapPad, and the live scribe Smart pen.

Today we'll dig into the future of early reading and explore how screen-free AI is shaping how young children learn.

At home and in the classroom.

But first, a little bit more about my guest, Jim Margrave is currently the CEO of Kabe learning, an early childhood literacy tool provider.

Over his career, Margrave has served as a serial entrepreneur and inventor and an advocate for literacy education and human-centered innovation.

He's best known for coveting the leapfrog leap pad.

I know my kiddo had one.

Founding I Fluence, which was acquired by Google as well as live scribe.

Welcome to the podcast,

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: you Ellen.

Good to be here with you.

Ellen Ullman: Awesome.

I think we'll start by giving our listeners a quick look into the world of early reading in 2025.

Can you kind of bring us up to speed with some of the big picture themes and issues especially as we end this year with everything

going on in the world.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Ellen, it's great to be here with you today.

I think a starting point is looking at the context we're in today around literacy and literacy awareness.

We are in a crisis the NAEP that measures the nation's scores for literacy shows.

Right now, we're at the worst levels of literacy for fourth graders, very important inflection point.

In the last 20 years, 2020, roughly 25 years ago, only 37% of kids in the US were proficient.

In fourth grade at reading.

Now today it's only 31%.

Now why fourth grade?

And what's important because kids learn to read and through this process, we'll talk about the science of reading in a bit.

But as kids learn to read it begins with vocabulary exposure and porosity.

They hear how language sounds.

If they're read to, there's great exposure, but by the up until fourth grade, they're learning to read.

And parents think of that as learning to sound out words primarily.

There's a lot more to it than that.

But by the time you get to fourth grade, you're learning to read.

So you should be able to read a paragraph, extract meaning from it, be able to do that fluently.

If you don't reach that level in fourth grade, at that point in time you shift to reading to learn.

You have to read in order to learn math, science, social studies, English.

If you can't read well enough to learn at that point, 'cause you're still struggling with basics, everything goes south.

70% right now, two thirds of kids in fourth grade rounded up, but two thirds of kids in fourth grade are not proficient readers.

And of those two thirds, roughly two thirds of those kids will end up either in jail or on welfare at some point in their life.

Now, if you know simple math, two thirds times, two thirds, that's four ninths, that's almost half of fourth graders today will be in jail or on welfare at some point in their life.

Think about the implications for society not being able to read for jobs, for work, but also just understanding where we are, understanding civics and more.

So it is a huge problem.

So educators know about this.

So that's the world we find ourselves in today, and that takes us into how do you help kids learn to read?

What are the tools and technology today, and why hasn't we solved this problem yet?

So any thoughts for you on that?

Ellen Ullman: I mean, it's startling, and I know that there's been so many studies, the way that kids show up to kindergarten where they're often already behind because their families haven't read to them or they haven't.

I mean, I mean, I know it's more than just reading, like kids show up and they don't know how to sit in a chair.

So there's also behavioral aspects.

It is just it's such an enormous problem.

And I'm kind of still mind blown over here with those numbers that you just laid out.

I mean, two thirds you know, that's it.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: It, yeah.

It makes

Ellen Ullman: I'm out.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: doesn't it?

It just incredible.

Yep.

And so, so here we are at this point in time saying, okay, what do we do?

And why do we have this problem?

So if you look at it part of the problem is arisen because of the approach taken to teach literacy over the last couple decades.

And based upon some, unfortunately.

Misconstrued and faulty research.

There were approaches that stopped teaching kids how to sound out words.

So imagine my guess is if you look at a word, you can probably sound it out, right?

Ellen Ullman: yes, and I know where you're going with this and I have a 21-year-old,

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Okay.

It's a it's been called many things, balance, reading, whole Language learning, a three point queuing system, and I'll leave names out, but suffice
it to say that a good bulk of our young adults today have gone through a period where in the classroom, the process of showing kids how to go.

Ah, C says, cut A says att says T, and to put those together and make a word ka at cat, cat.

That process.

When a child learns that, first of all, then they can decode or sound out other sounds, they can make, put sounds together to understand words, and they have a tool they can fall back on.

That's the process by which you, it's called phonemic first, phonemic awareness.

Being aware of sounds and how they relate to images, like a cap meowing or a letter having a sound and a name.

And then phonics, which is learning how to put these sounds together to form words, simple words, what are called CVCs, consonant, V consonant words.

That's where it kids start.

So you learn the names of the alphabet, the letters in the alphabet, you learn their sounds, then you put them together.

And there's a moment when a child on their own goes, ah.

And you say, what's that?

I don't know.

And try it again faster.

C ah, T. What's that?

I don't know.

And then they do it faster and they go C ah, to Kat.

Cat.

And they realize those black squiggles on the page that have sounds have formed a word, and that word now has meaning.

And they've heard the word cat.

They know what a cat is.

But that translation, that decoding process is an epiphany.

And when you see a kid's eyes light up when they do that for the first time, kids love it.

They love the experience of being able to decode that and sound it out.

Then they want to do another one and another one.

The place it falls apart.

Is if they're not taught properly and they look at this jumble of letters and they look at it and they don't know what to do with it.

And so the whole process previously was whole language just saying, don't worry about signing up.

It's too hard for kids.

Just let them look at the image of the cat, look at the shape of this, and they'll figure it out.

And eventually they'll know it.

And that's gone on in our education system.

Ellen Ullman: That whole, yeah, the sight

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Yeah.

Site.

Yeah.

Ellen Ullman: right?

Yeah.

That my daughter, yeah, my daughter would come home and ha and I remember saying to her, well, let's sound it out.

And she said, what are you talking about?

And that was like, again, she's 21.

And I remember thinking like.

Did I learn the wrong way?

Because you know, that's how I learned.

And we had Sesame Street, an electric company, and that's how they taught us as well.

And it seemed to me that something was missing because if she did come to a word, she didn't know it.

It can't be a sight word, right?

If she'd never seen it.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: let me help you with one, one term sight word today.

Actually, there's a positive term for a word that you recognize after you see it a lot of times that are hard to sound out, like the word,

Ellen Ullman: Like the

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: perfect, the right.

You just look at THE and you learn.

That's the, and eventually you learn, you know, there's th it makes the sound and then so you recognize it.

So there are decoding skills, but there's this, a limited set that are taught, but not discarding the whole approach.

Now, let's.

Tie that back historically.

So here I was back in 1998 after so, so early on I I did a telecom company, then I had the good fortune to have some success.

And I wanted to realize we had geographic literacies as a problem.

So I created a tool to make a sphere touch responsive with high resolution, low cost, and made a, put some art on it.

12 inch sphere, put on some, a base with some electronics, and made it talking globe.

So if you've ever seen a globe that talks when you touch it with a stylus I invented that and my kid, that was back in 19 95, 96, so my children were at the time, two and four, was watching them learn to read
and said, Hey, let's take this technology, flatten it out, put paper on it, and teach kids to read by letting them use a stylus, a pointer, and touch letters one by one, hear their names, hear their sounds.

And I thought that would be cool.

So I developed this, and at the time I took this idea to Mike Wood, who'd founded Leapfrog.

And said we could teach kids, read a whole new way and invented this tool called the LEAP Pad.

Now, at that time when we were creating content for the LEAP Pad, the whole language movement was just emerging and I pulled the best literacy expert in the world at Emeritus.

Professor Bob Cal at Stanford came into us and we said, what are we gonna do?

Because we had pressure on us even then.

Not to teach kids phonics.

We said No.

We'll teach them how to sound out words.

We'll show them.

We'll start with CVCs.

Then CCCs then uphold very well, very scientifically defined progression of introducing kids and now what's called the science of reading.

Starting with phonemic awareness, again, sounds then phonics and.

So, so we did that and we built a curriculum around that launched the LEAP Pad, and that was in 1999.

And as you know, we helped roughly a hundred million kids in about five years.

And so, so if I could fast forward to today, because we helped a lot of children at that time and many kids I have the good fortune of,

of having.

The missing

piece, we were able to send bleep pads out in the field.

Kids use them.

They love them.

They bought lots of books, but we had no feedback.

From the usage of the leap pads in the homes to know what the kids were doing to be able then to evolve with that child.

So they bought what they liked, but we didn't have a means to do two things.

One is to get that, number one, get the data.

The second thing is we created, at that time, books that went into the leap pad.

They were specific books.

We designed each one six by nine inches.

It plugged in the lead pad, you plug a cartridge in.

We pre-created this beautiful software and content to go with it, just engage kids emotionally, cognitively.

And the challenge was it sat there, it was an island.

So also we had limited number of books.

Eventually we had maybe a hundred books.

I mean, over five or six years, took a lot.

And these always special books, very expensive to create.

Couple hundred thousand dollars per book to create content back then two to $300,000.

So I said today, first of all, we need data.

Second, I want kids to do a little more than touching.

Let's see if what if we could engage them in with embodied learning motion.

But the most important piece is what if we could let them interact with any book.

Already on their

Ellen Ullman: Oh wow.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Okay.

So now I said, how could we do that?

Well, okay.

Along the way, LeapPad, there were special sized books that had to be put in a LeapPad.

Okay?

Then I invented a Leapfrog.

I used a new technology printing dots on a piece of paper, and the tag pen was created.

So now this is Leapfrog product.

You could point it at invisible, almost black dots on a piece of paper.

You know, I brought the technology in.

You could point at it and it would no location.

So you could do this without putting it in the leap pad.

That's nice.

But you still had to print dots on the paper.

So today I said, how could we let it work with a book?

You already have a new bookshelf or for that matter, any text at all, and how could you interact with that and teach kids to read that way, letter by letter sounds and games, and teach them with activities that are based upon the science of reading?

And the answer was ai.

Ellen Ullman: Right, of course.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: So, so what we've created now is a handheld device.

Think of it like a little Nintendo.

We okay, but instead of just a, we put some orbs on it for color that are part of language that actually light up.

So there's some illumination and they change color, but they support the reading in an interesting way.

Make the device handheld, make it wireless so we can connect to the internet, but also make it work standalone.

So if you want to be in your car at a beach or at home, you can use it standalone.

Then make it motion responsive.

Put memory in it so we can download content into books if you want to use it standalone, but also connects to the internet.

And finally put a speaker in it.

Put some buttons on it for control.

And now you've got this device in your hand.

Okay, you can move it around.

But how does it work with a book?

It looks like a little wand, like a magic wand with some color on it.

So the next thing we did is we put a sensor in it that is like a mini camera, but all self-contained, protected.

We're not taking photos and sending 'em anywhere.

Looks at a book.

Finally, how do you point at words?

So we took the wand and we put a light beam in the wand.

So you mentioned the company name Ke Beam.

That stands for Kids Beam.

So here you've got a handheld wand about four inches, little got buttons on it.

I'm holding in my hand speaker on it.

You point a beam of light, which is iaf.

It's an LED beam of light.

You point it towards a book, hold it about four, six inches away.

And when you do, there's this little green dot on the page.

When you pointed at a word, it reads it.

You point at a paragraph, it reads it, you point at a picture, it talks, you move it around the page.

It asks you to find words, play games, speak in different languages, all in a handheld device.

Now that will work with any book that teaches based on the science of reading and phonics, and this is the solution the world needs to eradicate literacy globally.

Ellen Ullman: Let's talk about comprehension.

' cause I know that there have been kids who can read fluently.

They'll just, you know, blast you a bunch of words and you ask them.

To tell you what they just read and that there's absolutely no correlation.

Right.

They can read, but they don't understand.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Okay, so let's start.

So, so it begins with, so if we look at the science of reading, there are parts that I mentioned before.

One of the key parts is vocabulary.

So the best thing you can do, if I were to ask you, Ellen when does a child begin to learn to read?

they should begin to learn to read is as soon as they're born.

And even before them, one could argue but when they're born, you wanna read to them.

The reading to them means they hear words.

Okay.

And the words they hear when you're reading are different than the words they hear when they're, you're speaking.

Because the cadence, the sentence structure the cadence is different.

The vocabulary is different.

It's actually richer in kids' books and and there's pictures in association with what they see on the page.

So reading to a child at birth forward is the most important thing you can do.

And then the type, the way you read to kids is with something called dialogic reading, where you're reading to them, you're talking to 'em and asking them questions about what they see.

So that's the next piece.

But now let's talk about comprehension, because here's where it begins when they're hearing this story.

They're making sense of the words.

Okay.

And then they're seeing the pictures and you're talking to them about what they're seeing.

Gee, who is that character?

How do they feel?

I wonder what's coming next.

So there's a whole prescribed set of type of steps you can take in this dialog, which means dialogue.

You're having a dialogue with your child.

Okay?

Ellen Ullman: Right, right.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: because then they're developing that foundational skill of hearing sentences, hearing vocabulary.

Now let's merge in the decoding part of it.

So they've heard this, they see the black ink on the page.

They don't know what the symbols mean.

Or they have names or letters that letters have names.

But then eventually they start to learn the letters.

They learn the sounds.

Now they start to practice decoding it.

Okay?

If they have the vocabulary, they have the context knowledge.

Then when they see that word that says pilot, okay, P-I-L-O-T.

Tricky word, pilot, long eye pilot or data.

At that point, if they've never heard the word before and you're asking 'em to comprehend a complex sentence or paragraph, they can't comprehend it because they don't know the words.

They might be able to decode them, but they don't know the meaning and they haven't heard them enough in different contexts.

So comprehension comes from.

The banking of the knowledge of the words, the practice of hearing them in context and sentences, and then the ability to make sense when their eyes move along and they decode each word, and pretty soon it becomes fluent because they can do it faster.

They don't study each word and sound it out.

They recognize 'em.

Then they can put them together, hear the sentence in their head.

It's called sub vocalizing.

They actually hear it, hear the words in their head as they're sounding it out quickly.

Then they can begin to comprehend.

Ellen Ullman: Wow.

It's a pretty amazing thing that those, I know, it's like first grade teachers are the heroes of K

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Absolutely.

And you know, the whole process, it is an unnatural human process.

I mean, which is why you do need to get kids through this process.

But as I said before, they love doing it when they see that word and they can decode it, and they get skilled at it, and you give them now the ability to succeed at it.

So now let's go back to a tools and technology.

When you give them a tool and they have the ability themselves.

To be able to get those words.

Now they can learn on their own.

And they practice and they try with their own.

They don't just rely on the tool.

They look, they kids like to, everyone loves to solve patterns.

So you love to look at a word and try to figure out what it means, then hear it or follow along with your eyes.

It's being spoken.

So when we look at this now in schools and classrooms.

As we talked about, teachers are overloaded, you know, they're dealing with behavioral issues.

They've got kids, they've got testing requirements, you know, post COVID issues.

So now you put a tool like this in a classroom.

The teacher has structured learning.

They go through the story, they read, and then they want to give the kids.

They say, go practice.

Well, if the kids go to a book on their own and they don't wanna give them screens, they look at the book and they can't read it, they're stuck.

So give them a tool now that allows that child to do what's called embedded practice where they can now practice on their own.

Now you've got a tool that amplifies what the teacher has given them and reinforces the motivation and the satisfaction the child has to succeed 'cause they can master it on their own.

Ellen Ullman: Amazing.

So are you doing some pilot testing with Kibes in different

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: yes.

Absolutely.

In fact, so we, at this point, so we've been doing pilot testing.

First of all.

We've just shipped our 110 thousandth wand,

In pilots.

But these are pilots.

And the pilots we've done, we did one with the Gates Foundation.

For kids pre-K to validate that the wand could be used to assess kids three, four, and five years old and we came out with Shine.

Ellen Ullman: Right, because there's a fine motor component to it, I would

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: can the child hold it?

Can they point the beam at a word?

Do they make sense cause and effect.

So we tried that with gates.

We did an 18 month study.

We went into classrooms.

I crawled around in Arizona and New Mexico and Pensa and Ohio.

With kids.

It came home with a lot of flu and other things that my wife about, but but it was great learning and we evolved it the whole way through.

So we found out yes, and the reason we did that, those assessments for the Gates Foundation with MDRC that sponsored this too, was that they
wanted to see if we could overcome the bias that is often present in observational assessments at this age, because black and Latino kids.

If they're misread because they're multilingual homes, they don't have the cultural fluency of certain words, and they can be their skills can be misinterpreted.

Once that happens and goes on the record, it becomes self-fulfilling.

So we, they said, let's break this and find a way to do it without screens.

So the teachers loved it.

So that led to us then.

The demand was so high, even without pro providing the assessments.

We said, what if we could provide the wands with books into pre-K classrooms?

So that's been part of our pilots.

we did pilots all summer in New York or in the spring in New York City pre-Ks, and now we're shipping first units into New York City, pre-K public schools, and that's one of our pilot areas.

The other is through a program in the state of Florida called New World's Reading Initiative, where the state gives kids from four to eight years of age free books if the child is below grade on their reading, as measured by the Department of Education.

They get, if they just sign up to, they go to the Florida website.

New World's reading initiative.

parent will enter child's name if that child, you know, is, has been tested in the last three times a year.

And that's two thirds of the kids in the state that qualify for this.

At this point, they're giving about 300,000 kids.

Books, free books.

Each month, nine months of the year, one book is sent to the home of the child, their home, not their school.

And those kids in kindergarten, first and second grade also get a free ke beam wand that brings those books to life.

Now Florida's excited about this pilot because they can collect data on the usage, on the reading of, and the abilities of those kids, while also making
it easier for those kids, again, to be able to use the books if they're in a home where they can't read, their parents, don't read to them, and more.

So this has been an incredible program and as I've said, we've just shipped our 110 thousandth, Juan to Florida.

For this pilot, it's very exciting and collecting data and we're getting insights on kids' early reading skills in situ at home with paper books that have never existed before.

Ellen Ullman: Well, and I think it's also, obviously in a state like Florida, this is even more important where there's so many kids, like you were referring to multi-language learners, right?

We tend to punish them for not knowing English when, how could they, you know?

But this is a great way, I would think, even for older students to maybe learn English

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Exactly.

In fact, the parents, we get feedback from parents because there's a lot of they actually provide support to kids in English books, Spanish books, and Haitian Creole in the state.

So we're doing our first Spanish books supporting Spanish this year.

And we get feedback because the parents, it's an opportunity for them to both practice reading their kids.

Sometimes if they're Spanish homes, hearing English.

And English, hearing Spanish.

So it's really well received.

And parents learn along with the kids and that gets the parents more involved with the kids, which is the best thing we can do as well.

And one.

So I

Ellen Ullman: Oh, a hundred percent.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: data.

The data on this are showing that kids, if you give a child a book, a 28 32 page book you know, a book on dinosaurs or a book on fly guy, I mean, popular books on space, typically that goes into a home with a five or 6-year-old.

How much time do you think a child will spend with that book just on their own without you?

They'll take the book, they'll look at it and they're five or six.

Okay, we find about the data, the research shows that they'll spend about five to seven minutes, not just collectively.

They'll look at it a few minutes, look through the pictures, maybe decode some words, set it down, come back a day later.

So they'll use it two or three days.

They'll look at it a few times, and they'll use it less than 10 minutes, typically five to seven.

And now the quality of that time is looking at pictures, a few words, getting a little bit from it.

So now bring the wand in.

First of all, when they're using the wand, they're hearing the whole story.

Ellen Ullman: Well, and a Wanda's kind of cool, right?

It's sort of Harry Potter, you know?

Just, I think it's a

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: In fact I can't get by without I, I know this is audio but let me, if I could, let me turn a wand on.

So you can hear it.

I'm gonna turn this on.

Okay.

It'll turn on.

It'll tell me what to do.

Here we go.

There comes you'll hear

Kabe wand reading system.

Okay.

Point your wands.

Happy Beam at the book you want to read.

So I

have a book, a dinosaurs book.

I'm pointing my beam at it.

Dinosaurs.

To read this book, press the big green button.

I push a button in my little handheld wand.

Great.

Open the book and point your beam at the pages

you want to read.

So I'm gonna go to a page where there's a dinosaur on it.

I'll point at it and listen to what happens.

New page.

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

They were huge.

Some were as long as a bus.

Okay.

So it's you have

to make a choice now.

And if I then stay in

play by pointing your beam at pictures and words, you

just heard Tyrannosaurus Rex, they were huge.

If I point at the word huge with my wand, huge.

Some were as long as a bus.

If I point at Tyrannosaurus Rex,

Tyrannosaurus Rex game time.

Press your big green button.

Okay, I'll push a button.

Let's play a game.

Tyrannosaurus is a big word.

Let's break.

This is the wand speaking.

Hold your wand like a hammer.

Hammer on the word until it breaks apart.

So

told me to hold the wand like a hammer.

And hammer on the physical paper, book on the word tyrannosaurus.

So I'm gonna hit it.

You'll hear me hitting it.

Ready?

Ta ram soar us.

How many parts did the word break into?

Listen.

Tara, so us five parts.

That means there are five syllables in the word Tara.

Let's play again soon.

So there's our wand.

So you got hard to do with a non-visual podcast.

You heard it in

And so the question is, so you can see a child using a wand plays games.

They're asked questions, they get sound, they get the story versus without it.

And also so without the wand, five to seven minutes with the wand, tens of thousands of kids across all of the books.

Average, average 28 minutes per book.

Ellen Ullman: Holy cow.

Four and a half times

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: And that's average across all books.

If you give them books, they real dinosaurs about 34 minutes

Ellen Ullman: Yeah, I'm thinking my little great nephew would be going nuts.

He he is a really good reader at age six,

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Uhhuh.

Yeah they do.

Ellen Ullman: I think I know what I'm getting him for

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Well, I wish you could, we're not out yet, unfortunately.

So it's available for schools at this point, and the schools are just the demand is incredible.

But we were, we're coming out consumer next year, so, but if you're in Florida, if any of your listeners are in the state of Florida, it's free.

If your kid's in kindergarten, first or second grade, go to the website.

If your child is one of the kids, you know, it's okay.

But it'll help them just go to the website, new World's Reading initiative.

Enter your name and their name and you'll find out if they qualify because two thirds of the kids in the states will qualify for you to get a free want.

And when this comes out on the market, it's gonna be a hundred dollars or more, and you can get it for free.

Now if you live in the state of Florida and just go to the website and you'll get free books as well between now and the time your child is in fifth grade.

If you qualify.

Ellen Ullman: That's incredible.

Hopefully more states will I don't know if

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Yeah, we're doing it through schools right now.

When I decided to launch this, initially I thought of launching consumer market and when the state of Florida approach, we approached we were connected, and we showed them what we had, we decided to help kids most in need first.

So we've been doing this and we're really working at helping struggling readers around the country and now bringing it make it available in classrooms, starting with pre-K, going to K in one.

And up, so, so that's the availability, but I wanna share that number.

28 minutes.

Incredible.

And that's high quality, 28 minutes?

Ellen Ullman: Yeah, no, I mean I love that it tells this, the child what to do, so there's no confusion or, I mean, obviously kids are
kids and they're gonna play, but when it says, you know, open the book and things like that, it's, you know, really good instructions.

Very clear.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Yep.

Ellen Ullman: Yeah.

So I think we're on, we're kind of getting toward the end of our time, but why don't, let's where do you think early reading.

Is going, I mean, I think obviously you're probably to the wand, but talk with me just a little bit about, you know, what we might be expecting to

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Yep.

Absolutely.

Alan.

I think first of all, let's just mention brain science.

Because in the first, the not only AI that's helping us interpret brain science, but the work being done in brain science with F-M-R-I-A, functional
magnetic resonance imaging and other forms of measuring what's occurring in the brain in the last decade has given us new insights around how kids learn.

How they learn to read.

So what's we're leaning into this heavily and we're looking at new techniques to support learning that are based upon the data of brain science.

And then we can collect data as well, and we'll see other companies doing this, collecting data on how kids are progressing, and then using that to then reinforce what they need to know at the time.

They need to know it.

This is called the zone of proximal development.

By a researcher named Vygotsky.

And the idea is making sure kids are always at the right point and you're adapting to their needs.

So, so that's something that we'll see.

And with AI even more so, so AI is going to enable us to be able to get that child motivated with the areas of interest they have with the right books, any book they choose at the right time and grow with that child.

We keep providing more direct personalized material for that child when they need it.

So that's one theme.

Another one is we're looking at the homeschool connection.

So being able, because we have a low cost platform that actually is, can be tied to curriculum in school, but it offers fun reading and really high entertainment at home.

That's a hard, that's a hard gap to cross.

So I see that we have an opportunity there to connect that homeschool linkage and provide data between the two, which is a data challenge, you know, sharing information, but it's possible.

So we have to reach for what's possible.

And I think the next one is contextual learning.

And again, ai, because now when we look at a child interacting, we've talked today about books and about print, but when we can engage kids with what they see around their home.

At a young age and reinforce these developmental skills, supporting reading as well, and literacy with knowledge and vocabulary that, again, that supports the skills, your banking
knowledge that they're going to need to be able to not only read well and comprehend as we talked about but also to think and develop critical thinking skills in the age of ai.

Where young kids with AI that's emerging, where more the big challenges is relying on AI will be relying on AI to do your thinking for you.

We need to develop critical thinking skills at an early age, and we can support that as well.

Interestingly enough, using AI to be sure that we're teaching kids how to use AI with the proper critical thinking in the future.

And that's all doable today.

And that's part of the reading journey as well.

We can do that at home.

We can do that in the classroom.

And and I think, and then the final one is providing the feedback and the data to the parents and the teachers.

So they get a dashboard and they can see where their kids or their students are.

As they're progressing in this journey and then remediate, guide them, provide guidance to the teacher to offload them, to give them assistance to say here, your child based on, or your student based on what they need here, direct them to use these books.

Or eventually direct them to, you know, play with other manipulatives in the classrooms so that'll be coming.

But I think it's, again, the contextual learning, the adaptive learning the homeschool learning and all based upon brain science are elements that are what we'll see coming in, in reading development.

Ellen Ullman: Right.

That whole journey.

Yep.

Excellent.

Well, where can people find you, Jim?

Are you, if people wanna get in touch, they have questions.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Well, I have a LinkedIn, so, my, excuse me.

My name is Jim Margrave and you've got it.

M-A-R-G-G-R-A-F-F.

So I'm present on LinkedIn doing more, spending a lot of time with our team, working on developing this, but I do get out and I speak at events.

You can check out some of the things.

I've had the good fortune to be on the stage at TED before for some smaller interstitials and back.

Oh, 15, 20 years ago I was on the main stage.

And so, and oh, I, and as well just reference, I wrote a book a few years ago coming out of Leapfrog called How to Raise a Founder With Heart.

And because my son, my, both my kids are entrepreneurs and my son won something called the Intel Science Fair which is a, yeah

Ellen Ullman: Yes.

I remember when they used to have that.

They don't do it anymore.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: now.

It was Westinghouse and went to Intel, but yeah, it was one out of many millions of kids.

And he in, when he was a senior high school, he won that.

Of course he was around Leapfrog and he helped, you know, he was one of, he was the voice, in fact, in the LEAP pad.

If you ever turn it on you recognize a voice.

It was mine as the narrator, and my son was the voice of Tad and he went on to, to to win the science fair you know, become Nobel Prize for high school kids.

And now he's, he started his third company, so, in the area of biology and healthcare.

And now he's applying AI to people as we age.

So a full circle.

So, yep.

Ellen Ullman: Yeah, that really great.

So we'll find you on LinkedIn.

Alright, well Jim, thank you so much.

This is really exciting and I'm definitely gonna be keeping my eyes on Kabe and where you're going because.

You know, hopefully this will get those NAEP and other scores up and raise a better reader for the whole

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Let's solve, let's eradicate literacy.

Let's give kids the opportunity to succeed in life and and realize their full potential.

Ellen Ullman: Fantastic.

Now for all you listeners out there, we hope you've enjoyed this conversation.

And if you know someone who's pushing the field forward, like an innovator, researcher, educator, or entrepreneur like Jim here reach out and pitch guests to edu talk@bepodcast.network.

I'll put that in the show notes and I hope to see you all soon.

cloudRecording_SquadCaster c2ie_Take_2_audio: Thanks, Helen.

Ellen Ullman: Thank you.