One-line solution summary:
Bridging the sensorial gap for increasing equity and access in remote inclusive education via IoT
Pitch your solution.
Covid 19 disrupted education, making distance a problem since the main prevention measures to stop the spread of Covid19 is social distancing, which forces institutions to use resources such as video audio as remote learning tools, adding a layer of complexity to Teacher Student communications. Distance is particularly difficult to solve for a teacher relying on Touch as a teaching tool, such is when with certain cases of visually or hearing impaired students. there are no remote teaching platforms that include other senses apart from visual and auditory stimulus for the educational experience.
EDucacion INclusiva integrates touch through haptic technology which enables this sensorial input into the remote communication between teachers and students, EDIN also works online and offline, modular through App store, captures real-time feedback evaluating students without the need for physical contact.
EDIN uses the internet of things (IoT) providing assistive technology for education mitigating distance as a problem.
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Before covid 19, people with disabilities faced great barriers to equitable education, causing many boys and girls to choose to drop out of school and reducing the range of primary education for people with disabilities to less than 1% in some countries. Due to the little understanding and negative attitudes, it led people with disabilities mainly to the inclusive education in this direction.
With the beginning of the pandemic, the problem worsened because the distance was established as a preventive measure for covid 19, changing everything faster than expected, leaving the educational systems unprepared and how to implement them remotely. Opting to use video conferencing to reach the majority of students but with inefficient learning and in most cases affecting people with disabilities, only 31% had access to a computer and most of the parents said they were not useful for their children.
People with disabilities are relying on specialized teachers and teachers are relying on Touch as a teaching tool, only 12% have access to physical material.
As a consequence, they were left without efficient tools to learn remote and without teachers being able to capture real-time feedback evaluating students
What is your solution?
Edin uses the Internet of Things to provide a solution for distance communication between students and teachers, the most cases Touch is used as a learning tool in inclusive education.
The solution integrates a new sense of distance learning with haptic technology where the Touch plays a fundamental role, especially for people with hearing or visual disabilities. The signals are sent through a platform integrated with our haptic technology, the internet enables receive and understand the signals for the student and the teacher.
Our solution is has been thought to be use locally without internet access, the teachers can continue to use the platform , sending signals to theirs students locally conected to the gateway .
In this way, teachers will be able to use different applications and get feedback from their students in real-time without the need for physical contact. And teach simultaneous classes through this technology.
As a result, Solving the problem of distance for students and teachers who need a remote tool to continue their education and the institution have in the future a great tool in their classrooms.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
Before covid 19, people with disabilities were exposed to different situations in different educational centers due to the lack of tools or the lack of teaching methods for them, covid 19 caused the closure of all schools in more than 180 countries, leaving 85% (WORLD BANK ORG) of students outside of school. People with disabilities and their families especially facing multiple vulnerabilities especially in education. The sudden change to receiving distance classes through different remote tools has been quite complicated in the daily life of each student.
Currently, they continue to use inefficient tools and teachers cannot measure the performance of each of the students, and distance being the main factor in the deficiency of teaching. Most of the disability people learn through physical contact. The way we approached this problem was by analyzing that people who do not have any disabilities can choose to use other remote tools using the sense of hearing or sight for video conferences or webinars to continue their education, EDIN focused on the needs of people with disabilities who need a remote platform that involves more than 2 senses which will allow through haptic technology and thus solving the problem of distance learning, helping teachers to do their classes in a better way, obtaining real-time data on the performance of their students, additionally when classes were taught, students needed to learn one by one, one teacher needed one student to teach, they could not teach more than 1 student, with our remote platform the teacher can teach classes to several students simultaneously and receive the results in real-time, creating more inclusive classes For the educational development of each of the students.
Situations before covid19 where disability people had difficult experiences in educational centers, with the school reopening we plan a future advance for the inclusive education where multiple classes can be received through our Remote modular apps either physically or in-person for those people who are in situations of difficult access to educational centers, also thinking of family members without internet access, it can work in the same way so that they can access, improving their lives and giving them a different kind of experience with the education. Our expectation is to reach all students with disabilities who attend different educational centers where they use our technology together with their teachers.
Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
Increase the engagement of learners in remote, hybrid, and physical environments, including strategies and tools for parental support, peer interaction, and guided independent work.Explain how the problem you are addressing, the solution you have designed, and the population you are serving align with the Challenge.
As many as half of the estimated 65 million primary and lower secondary-school age children with disabilities in developing countries were already out of school before COVID-19 according to GLAD. With COVID19 the schools were closed, many countries have turned to online instruction to continue learning. Learners with disabilities currently are also least likely to benefit from distance learning solutions. Where we made EDIN to ensuring that all learners with disabilities continue to receive a quality education, EDIN considers that actions their specific needs for access to the students and teachers.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Guatemala C.A, GuatemalaWhat is your solution’s stage of development?
Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model.Explain why you selected this stage of development for your solution.
The research and development of the project have been carried out since 2019 with the main objective of providing tools for inclusive education with the help of technology to improve the education of many children, in 2020 despite the pandemic we continue With the development of our project and we find ourselves in the need to add new improvements to our project such as the implementation of distance education through the platform with optimal communication for educational development within the institutions. Currently, we have managed to use remote communication by joining the platform and the gloves, a platform with modular apps and an MVP in our hardware.However, we are making a new structure in the industrial design of the gloves for the comfort of its by adding new materials that they can use in a better way.
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Carlos Osuna
If you have additional video content that explains your solution, provide a YouTube or Vimeo link here:
Which of the following categories best describes your solution?
A new application of an existing technologyWhat makes your solution innovative?
In inclusive education different innovations have been presented for communication and improvement at different levels, however, there are still different gaps to be overcome. , from the preparation of specialized teachers untill the content and accessible tools that teachers and students can use.
Focused on the need for solutions for inclusive education, we decided to innovate in communication and accessibility for both teachers and students.
In most cases for inclusive education physical contact is needed for the transmission of ideas, so through haptic technology and the internet of things we created the EDIN project that facilitates remote learning where teachers can teach the classes to their students through their hands despite the distance, having the sending of signals within the reach of a click. Additionally, it allows different simultaneous classes to be taught through our modular apps, evaluating the performance of the students in real-time, something that was not possible before since the teaching was more personalized, that is, for 1 teacher 1 student.
The solution has a greater scope, some families or institutions do not have internet access, however, the platform through a local module can teach classes with or without the internet allowing the same functionalities to be carried out.
EDIN has a call to make a great positive impact in the inclusive education of each of the students by transforming the conventional way of teaching. Allowing educational centers or teachers an accessible tool that they can use despite limited access to internet.
Please select the technologies currently used in your solution:
Select the key characteristics of your target population.
Which of the UN Sustainable Development Goals does your solution address?
In which countries do you currently operate?
In which countries will you be operating within the next year?
How many people does your solution currently serve? How many will it serve in one year? In five years?
In Guatemala, there are more than 10% of the Guatemalan population has a disability according to CONADI in our first year we focus on the most important institutions of inclusive education in the country, where we have had constant communication with each of them to carry out tests of our project So we hope to reach the most important entities in the area of inclusive education in GUATEMALA that covers more than 85% of boys and girls with disabilities in the area of education.
The United States (US) Department of Education reports that the range for all students with disabilities included for at least 80% of the day in the general education classroom in different states
Through strategic alliances, we plan to impact the population of American and Canadian children so that children with disabilities who suffer from a lack of tools can have tools like our project to advance within the classrooms.
our long-term goal is to cover In low- and middle-income countries, 50% of children with disabilities do not attend school due to lack of tools around the world according to human and inclusion. Achieve that through our platform these children can return to school to have as many children with disabilities in classrooms through our project
How are you measuring your progress toward your impact goals?
EDIN is connected to the cloud, the remote platform allows us to measure the number of registered users. However, the goals can be seen in the number of hours of use used by teachers with students, quantifying how many hours per week and what were the Student performance results by viewing the progress graphs of each of the students, so teachers can improve their classes with their students by managing the data collected through the platform through different cognitive exercises.
Through the classes that are taught, the educational centers will be able to measure the speed and effectiveness of the response of their students simultaneously since through the platform they can have classes with more than 10 students in that way they will be able to see the benefit of the Practice constantly together and evaluate teachers with the teaching methods that each teacher performs.
The number of gloves delivered presents an additional index of how many gloves each institution has and compiles statistics on how many children can benefit from the gloves and the platform
What type of organization is your solution team?
Not registered as any organization
How many people work on your solution team?
Carlos Osuna Full time
KESTLER Full Time
SABAN PART TIME
ivan PART TIME
MAICON Full time
MARCO POLO Part time
DANIEL CONTRERAS Part Time
How long have you been working on your solution?
1.5 years
How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?
Since 2017, Carlos Osuna participated in different foundations for deafblindness in Guatemala, generating solutions for different educational software, and through the institutions, he achieved the idea of the current project.
Edwin Kestler, the next founder of the project, is a telecommunications engineer, has participated in different innovation awards at an international level, applying to several Bootcamp of the Massachusetts Technological Institute and finalist in this same program of the year 2017, he is currently the chief designer of EDIN project software
Maicon Chip has had a great journey in the design of products at the industrial innovation level for different industries in Guatemala focused mainly on industrial design, he is currently the director of industrial design of the project and in charge of seeing the science of the materials used in the project. hardware.
The 3 members were able to realize the EDIN Project due to the great journey that had been taken in the design of products, how different educational centers of inclusive education operate, experience in telecommunications and software. We were motivated by the need for people with disabilities in the field of education, focusing on one of the most important sustainable development which is more inclusive classes for people with disabilities and we truly believe that EDIN can be a fundamental tool for access to education of different people with disabilities.
What is your approach to building a diverse, equitable, and inclusive leadership team?
One of the members of the project lived for a large amount of time with a person with a disability since she was a sister on his behalf, so she shared the experience of what it means to live with a person with a disability. Unfortunately, our partner's sister lost life but he does not forget the way it is lived and the difficulty of adapting to the lifestyle of a person with Down syndrome, however, he did not know that this was not the last time he was going to experience what it was to live with a person with a disability on that occasion it was on behalf of the school, I did internships in a non-profit entity focused on helping people with deafblindness called FUNDAL, through this foundation they began to obtain different points of view for continue to improve the project from its inception in this way, it was thought that it could reach a greater number of different types of disabilities so it began to have contact with different foundations for the blind, down syndrome and intellectual disability.
In this way, it was possible to capture the greatest number of needs of different foundations and find things in common to continue with the innovation of the project.
Do you primarily provide products or services directly to individuals, to other organizations, or to the government?
Individual consumers or stakeholders (B2C)Why are you applying to Solve?
Solve is a global platform that will help us to have exposure with investors or entities interested in generating impact through applying our technology. Participating in such a prestigious international competition allows us to expand our exposure to local media. Thus, it is a great platform to scale and impact as many people as possible through the prestige of the Massachusetts Technological Institute, which is that through technology significant changes can be made in different problems around the world.
Solve allows engineers, teachers, students, inventors, and scientists from all over the world to converge in the same space, where the exchange of ideas and knowledge is quite important for the development of ideas or projects around the world. With the help of a platform such as solving the interest of different companies or non-profit institutions, they can approach to be able to contribute ideas or capital to the projects within the competition which brings an incredible boost for different workgroups, therefore it represents a great leap for different projects that can impact the lives of different communities and reach them in a faster way.
In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
Please explain in more detail here.
Currently, we need main support in the financial field, however, there have been other challenges to overcome where we see ourselves in the search to achieve progress as quickly as possible so that the results that we want to obtain are fulfilled in the established time.
We need a good boost in the commercialization of our project since we need more distribution channels to be able to reach the people who need it most, therefore, advice on the distribution and business model would help us achieve the sales goals that we have. established, at the moment it is through strategic alliances with non-profit entities and companies with a focus on making a social impact in education. However, with the right advice, we can find a more effective way to establish a better business model, reaching a greater number of clients and choosing options that had not been taken into consideration. This leads us to the fact that our current status of the project is that it is not yet registered as an entity, where we must establish what regulation and what legal requirements we must-have for the project to be established and comply with the necessary regulatory laws.
What organizations would you like to partner with, and how would you like to partner with them?
We have always had the objective of forming alliances with different entities on this occasion it has been observed that through Solve de MIT there are different members of solve and we are interested in their being able to support us in continuing with innovation, distribution, and improving the quality of education of every student with a disability in the world.
Since we believe a lot in the quality of our project and the impact on the lives that it can generate not only in the teachers and students but also in the parents of each of the students, allowing more opportunities through our tool expanding their horizons through the transmission of knowledge.
The groups we select are General Motors, Microsoft, Salina Group, and Save the Children.
Each group contains a great background of support in education or towards people with disabilities, so they will likely help us to promote our project by overcoming the barriers that currently have arisen.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The ASA Prize for Equitable Education? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The Andan Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The GM Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The GM Prize for Innovation in Refugee Inclusion to advance your solution?
General Motors is one of the most inclusive companies around the world and has an impact on the most excluded people, so our project can meet the expectations that the company has on how to create a more inclusive world and without excluding any person. In the world, in education at the moment there are still different barriers to overcome, however, EDIN completes not only a STEM project to allow students with disabilities to have access to an effective tool for their education in different areas of mathematical reasoning among others, but It also impacts the daily life of each of the students and teachers by the multiple forms of its use and is the solution of a platform for remote or face-to-face use which teachers can continue with the education of their students.
Before the covid19 education barriers for people with disabilities were evident, there were very few tools to help with the education of each student with disabilities, now with EDIN, educational centers, and teachers will be able to quantify the performance of their students and continue with their education to Despite the distance, with a view to the future where EDIN is the universal learning platform for people with disabilities, creating much more inclusive environments within the classrooms in each educational institution.
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for the Innovation for Women Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
No, I do not wish to be considered for this prize, even if the prize funder is specifically interested in my solution
Do you qualify for and would you like to be considered for The AI for Humanity Prize? If you select Yes, explain how you are qualified for the prize in the additional question that appears.
The data in this century are very important for the generation of new solutions in different fields, taking into account the relevance of the data EDIN allows teachers to be able to quantify the performance of their students through exercises and evaluations that the student responds in real-time through individual classes or classes with more than 10 students, something that could not be done before due to the lack of teaching tools. For teachers to improve teaching techniques they need to see the different qualities of each of the students, observe their weaknesses and be able to reinforce them so that students can achieve high performance.
The data generated by the platform will allow the teacher to generate new teaching methods for students to improve in different cognitive areas for the advancement of their education.
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?
Yes, I wish to apply for this prize
Explain how you are qualified for this prize. How will your team use The AI for Humanity Prize to advance your solution?
Machine Learning will allow us to help teachers to generate new content from the results of their students, with the automatic generation of evaluations appropriate to each of the students, this will benefit the teachers so that they can teach their classes in a better way due to the number of solutions that the platform will provide with the help of machine learning.
We believe that the amount of data generated will make it possible to find deficits at an early age in different students, allowing educational institutions and teachers to find prompt solutions so that the different deficits of students cannot affect them at an older age. Creating new models of teaching and preparation for students, allowing the work of educational institutions and teachers to be much more efficient.
Solution Team
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Edwin Kestler CTO, Flatbox, S.A.
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Edwin Kestler Mr., flatbox, s.a.
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Carlos Osuna EDIN
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Solution Name:
Edin: Future-proof Inclusive education