Making Learning Fun and
Intuitive
Smartivity Labs The startup
uses Augmented Reality based activities to teach kids
Can technology add more joy
to colouring? If you ask Smartivity, they'd say Yes! Four engineers are on a
mission to change the way kids look at learning and fun activities. Move over,
mere colouring books and puzzles, augmented reality is going to bring them
alive on screen.
“I and Apoorv (cofounder)
were at the birthday party of a common friend couple of years ago. We saw the
kids play with the gifts, all expensive ones. Their engagement with each toy
was for five to seven minutes. Once they understood how it works, they got
bored. This got us talking,“ said Tushar A Amin, cofounder at Smartivity Labs.
Over the next few months,
the team thought about the problem and quit their jobs and got down to making
products. “Like Steve Jobs said connecting the dots, we had colouring
activities and we had augmented reality. Now we can make Augmented Reality
enabled colouring activities,“ said Amin. They called their learning kits as
`Yoohoo box'.
The Delhi-based startup
right now h a s two broad product ranges : STE(A)M ( Science , Technology,
Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) learning based Do-It-Yourself kits, which
have a fundamental scientific concept at the core of each activity, and
Smartivity EDGE, their augmented reality-enabled leaning activities. Augmented
reality is a technique which enables superimposing digital objects over physical
ones.
The team was inspired by
American psychologist and psychometrician Robert Sternberg's theory of
successful intelligence, which proposes that a perfect balance of creative,
practical and analytical intelligences is necessary for success in real life. The
user has to download the Smartivity EDGE application, which is available on
both android and iOS to experience the augmented reality platform.
“For example, a child
colours a lion with pink and scans the sheet. The pink lion will come alive on
screen and you get to know everything about the animal. You also have spelling
tests along with it. The lion will nod if you answer correctly, “ said Amin.
The startup's app is available in 52 cities across the country and has tied up
with brands such as Hamley's and Landmark as also with independent local toy
stores.
The product prices range
from `249 to ` 999. The future plans for the startup include robotics based
learning tool, which aims to teach children the fundamentals of programming,
and an internet connected engagement that connects toys, one could call it an
internetoftoys.
“ Smartivity Do-It-Yourself
STEM based activities encourage learning of core concepts while having fun,
whereas the Augmented Reality enabled coloring sheets and puzzles enhance
children's learning and engagement. Given the high level of innovation at the
company, the investment was a natural choice for us,“ said Gaurav Jhunjhnuwala,
director at S Chand.
|
J Vignesh
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ET8APR16
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