Tesla CEO Elon Musk has awarded a $10 million prize to two startups that have won a competition to create technology that allows children to learn to read, write and count on their own.
Kids-focused startups onebillion and Kitkit School will share the money. They were among the five finalists who made it through the final round of the X-Prize Foundation's Global Learning XPRIZE. Musk is the sponsor of this award.
The contestants were faced with the task of developing a technology that would allow children to independently learn the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic within 15 months.
The five finalists were invited to test their technological solutions; for which each team received $1 million.
Nearly 3000 children took part in the testing, which took place in 170 villages in Tanzania. Thanks to the new technology, these children had to improve their reading and writing skills in Swahili within 15 months of testing.
According to XPrize, 74% of these children had never attended school prior to the test, 80% had never read at home, and more than 90% could not read a single word of Swahili. However, after 15 months of training using new technologies and Pixel tablets, the number of those who could not read was halved.
Source: 3dnews.ru