MONTE–Framework to develop 21st century skills for children

Our solution offers MONTE, a hands-on STEAM learning platform which engages, inspires young inventors by giving them tools to imagine and invent the future, to be producers and creators with technology.

With the World Economic Forum identifying the essentials skills of the future, our objective is to ensure that all children using our framework can develop 21st century skills that will help them be ready for the future workforce. We know that in 10- and 20-years time, many traditional jobs from the industrial revolution era are to become automated.

Our platform helps children, from 3 years old, unleash their imagination and develop their skills of the future in creativity, design, collaboration and technology.

With our socially minded, we have already piloted in a rural area in Vietnam. The solution utilize STEAM and coding integrated approach to offer quality education in the future proof skills for young children in Bangladesh.

Robotics and programming provide a fun and hands-on way to introduction young children to all aspects of STEM. Unlike many apps developed for children, Monte offer a playful and collaborative way for children unleash their imagination without requiring screen time on PCs, tablets or smartphones. Monte can help young children to make their ideas physical and tangible, make coding as a playground. Children as young as 3 years old can build and program a simple robot while learning concepts of computational thinking.

Students in developing countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh have limited access to technology devices, e.g: smartphones, tablets, PCs. However, most of products relates to coding, programming, required those technology devices to program the robot or controlled devices. With Monte framework, children not only learn coding without requiring additional devices, they can develop other skills: collaboration, arts, English….

The Monte solution can be applied to Bangladesh for children from 3 years old. The Monte playset is simple enough teachers can learn to use in a day. Teachers can deliver training to children in a short training time. The limit resources of technology devices that make Monte is a promise solution to implement in Bangladesh.

We are working with pre-school children in Vietnam committed to early childhood education. Vietnam has made kindergarten mandatory from age 3 to combat the early literacy gap and we see our solution as part of that mission. We target both public and private schools. We are also working in Korea to develop contents for using Monte in developing English, Mathamatics and STEAM skills for children in Korea. With this learning material, we can translate and use for Vietnam and other countries.

In next 2 years, we start to target to consumer market, bring Monte to family as a educational game toys to use in family.

Inspired by Montessori method, Monte playset combines traditional education philosophy with technology to help children learn 21st century skills with easy and fun.

Monte playset can be used as a playful STEAM coding toy for boys and girls aged from 3 to 7 or more.

Research shows that even in early childhood, children are already beginning to form opinions and stereotypes about which tools and technologies are better suited towards boys or girls. By engaging young children in coding and robotics activities before these stereotypes begin to take root, we can help them build positive associations with technology and engineering and a self-image as a creator with technology.

Introducing coding robot integrated with STEAM activities in early children using Monte playset offers a unique approach to foster curiosity, creativity and imagination of children.

MONTE is the first educational platform combines IoT devices, artificial
intelligence for young children. Artificial Intelligence platform will help parents, educators understand children compentencies and knowledge gaps, the platform also help parents save time and efforts to find courses for their children by suggest a learning path for each child based on their learning history and capability analysis.

Data recorded will be synchronize to cloud, AI platform will use data to learn and training the model.

Parents or teachers can get report of child’s skill competencies. If the data collected enough, they can get courses suggested from the AI-powered platform. This AI platform will search courses from online MOOC resources and arrange for each child based on their learning abilities, knowledge gaps. A child can use suggested learning path to learn by himself, online. This process will be time saved for parents or teachers to get the best suited courses for a child.

How technologies are integrated to our solution:

Technologies in hardware will help us collect children activities in real-time, BLE (Bluetooth low energy) will help to transfer data to the cloud easily through Monte Link app or Monte-Hub hardware. Thanks to services like Azure IoT Edge and Azure AI from Microsoft, our solution can run without internet. It only needs internet to update data to cloud for machine learning update the learning model or analysis to generate report and other outputs.

Our solution works from hardware level to collect data (Monte playset) to cloud with AI-powered.

The unique features are the magic wand, and tangible programming blocks which enable children can program any devices from Monte eco system, without screen devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs,…).

This new application of Bluetooth, NFC technology turn the Monte framework to be a wonderful tool for children spark their curiosity, unleash imagination and make their stories come true.

Product overview:

• • Unique solution: Designed for children 3+, MONTE is the only puzzle-like, tangible coding solution in the world, literally making coding as simple as snapping together the pieces of a puzzle.
  • STEAM learning: MONTE offers a cross-curricular approach to teaching science, technology, engineering, art, and math subjects, all while making it fun. This hands-on, screen-free solution is also perfect for developing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills.
  • Easy to use: Setup takes just minutes, no previous experience is required, and there are no screens or software to worry about with this tabletop solution.
  • Hands on, screen free: MONTE offers hands-on, screen-free coding; no additional technology is required. Simply piece together the wooden blocks, place your Woody Bot on start position, and use the Magic wand to scan the blocks, waving the magic and then the Woody Bot go!
  • All-encompassing: MONTE comes with 10 blocks (basic package), activity maps, and other accessories. At MONTE Education online, you’ll find beautifully illustrated activities and task cards, as well as video tutorials and quick start guides to help you get MONTE up and running.

Thanks to the tangible programming blocks, the Monte can be implemented even in rural area where there is not computer or technology devices. Simple to use, easy to setup, and screen-free, those are unique features of Monte can help the teachers and students to learn about 21st century skills.

Teachers don’t need to spend time on learning how to use the product, so they have more time to create contents for their students, spend more time with students.

Here are some photos we introduce the Monte to children in a village in Tra Vinh province, Vietnam.

We believe Monte also can be easily implemented in Bangladesh, for teachers as well as students.

So far, we have served around 50 students in Vietnam after just 3 months we introduced the product to the market.

We expected end of this year, 2019, we will deliver product to more than 10 kindergartens and primar schools, reaching to more than 1.000 students.

In five years, we are planning to have 1 million units sold to reach more than 10 million students around the world.

Currently, Monte is developed and manufactured in Vietnam and we are developing the content with Korean partners to have the high-quality educational contents.

Next year this material can be used for students in Korea and then will be translated and modified for Vietnamese market.

In 2020: focus on developing learning materials, improving the products. The product will be made in Vietnam and sell to Korean market.

In 2021: continue to develop learning material and adjust for more countries, develop a community to co-create content, lessons for Monte. R&D team will release some more devices for children to leanr coding.

In 2022 – 2025: develop and implement the AI plaform for Monte.

The most important for education is learning materials. We are lacking resources to develop educational contents for Monte playset. We are working with some partners in Korea to work with us building educational contents for Monte. This leads to require more money that is also a barrier for us. We must have more capital to invest in creating contents, developing new devices.

To overcome these barriers, first we must work with partners already have experiences in education to build lesson, curriculum.

To get the better cashflow, we must sell products and provide services for schools, teachers and parents to have enough money to sustain. In the mean time, we also look for investment from angle inverstor or any source we have.

Expansion plan to Bangladesh:

 - In 2020: open a local business entity, register for patent in Bangladesh. We will find partners in manufacturing to produce as many as possible in Bangladesh. By using local resources, we can save time and money in manufacturing. We can start to provide training service to teachers and provide Monte to schools as a workshop event.

- In 2021 and later year: connect with Ministry of Education in Bangladesh to implement Monte into more schools.

- Open STEAM and Coding centers in Bangladesh also another approach we will do in some selected areas in Bangladesh.

Currently we have 6 people working on the Monte:

- Dan Tong: Founder and CEO, Monte project lead

- Ha Thai Vuong, Le Duc Phuong: electronics engineer from Ho Chi Minh University of Technology. They work in Monte project as system design engineer.

- Accountant, Graphics Designer and a teacher to create learning material.

We are young team with a passion to bring tools for children to develop 21st century skills.

Mr. Dan Tong with a lot of experience in technology from his working in some international corporation. He also a father with children from 4 to 8 years old, so he understands that create a new toy the help children more time to play, reduce screen time, is very important.

Prior to founding Kodimo in 2016, he was the Co-founder of Gremsy Co.,
Ltd, develops digitalize camera stabilized system supports drone and
inspection industry in global market. Before he founded Gremsy, he also
worked for some international companies, GES, Intel Products Vietnam,
just named a few. Before he succeeded with Gremsy, he also started some
businesses, but they were not successful as wanted so he stopped those
business to work for companies to get more experiences and networking.

Customers: 

 - Schools: Kindergartens, primary schools, this segment we focus more on educational contents with curriculum, lesson plans.

 - Home (family): we focus more on Edutainment, play and learn with fun activities.

Value proposition:

 - Screen-free, hands-on playset.

 - Learn 21st century skills.

 - Personalize learning based on real history learning data.

Revenue stream:

 - Selling products.

 - Membership on Monte Learning platform.

 - Commission from Affiliate program from MOOC platforms.

Currently we self-funded and in next few months, we will sell product to get better cashflow.

In 2019, we plan to sell 1000 units with revenue from $200,000 as an entry market phase and we focus on Vietnamese market first.

In early 2020, we will launch our membership program to enable users can access more lesson plan, curriculum and more benefits. It is also channel to help communicate and keep our customers stay with us.

In 2020, we plan to raise fund for around $1,000,000 (one million USD) to enter global market. Furthermore we also invest in R&D to have more products to support our ecosystem better. Especially apply AI to our platform to help users in learning.

We apply for the Tiger Challenge because:

- Receive support from the network in order to improve and develop products and services better.

- Fund to invest in setup and running business in Bangladesh.

Schools, early childhood development experts, educators.