LabTak: support platform for planning and teaching.

Teachers in low-income communities aren’t motivated enough due to the lack of preparation and training to adapt their work to the needs of the 21st century. Planning their classes takes a lot of time and the lack of quality educational content complicates this task. This is reflected in the lack of interest to study by students, and in their low quality of teaching. With LabTak, teachers, not only access to a tool that facilitates planning through a library of quality educational content, they also familiarize with the use of technology and digital academic programs. Today, technology plays an important role globally and being prepared with digital tools means being prepared for the jobs of the future. This learning mechanism is beneficial for both teachers and students as it promotes the development of 21st century skills, which will allow them to progress at a personal, work and therefore community level.

In Mexico there are currently 36.4 million young people preparing for the future, and more than 2 million teachers responsible for educating them. However, 57% of the students are grouped in the lower levels of Mathematics and 67% in the lower levels of Spanish reading, when finishing junior-high (PISA, 2015).

This low quality in education respond to diverse causes, one of them is that teachers are not supported and sufficiently trained to design a planning that motivates and encourages children to learn. Teachers ignore the 21st century necessities, designing deteriorated educational strategies with non updated content.

Experts in education, agreed it is difficult for teachers to develop a planning that really serves reality, and that it has become a bureaucratic tool more than one that responds to their students’ needs. They waste a lot of time planning, grading and in bureaucratic processes of the institution instead of focusing on student´s individual necessities.

The problem that we are trying to solve is make efficient the lost hours, they need a tool that can help them efficient their time invested and innovate in their planning in an easy way.

For 9 years Inoma has been deploying TAK-TAK-TAK in schools: a free educational system based on video games. Inoma found out that when teachers guided the use of the games, the children's learning was leverage. Due to this discovery Inoma launched a site especially for teachers and parents with information about the content of TAK-TAK-TAK, with the objective of helping teachers to integrate digital tools into their class. However, having an informational tool alone did not seem to be motivating enough for teachers to integrate digital tools into their teaching.

For that reason we created LabTak a tool that helps them in their planning, and also encourages them to use updated educational plans and high quality educational content, while giving and receiving support from other teachers thanks to the educational community that will make up LabTak.

In short, medium and long terms, teachers will discover how to design their planning effectively through LabTak and integrate learning resources based on digital games such as TAK-TAK-TAK.; they´ll know the current benefits of these tools and students will also develop digital skills. They will take advantage of the information generated by the reports of labtak.mx to follow up and support their students.

Labtak is a digital tool that allows teachers to choose and/or develop pedagogical strategies based on digital educational content. The site contains a library of diverse and vast digital educational resources previously curated by our pedagogical team to facilitate and optimize the strategy design. This means that through the site, teachers can choose educational content and add them to their strategies. They can also chose the predesigned strategy, created by the LabTak team, that best adapts to their students’ needs. 

LabTak also includes personalized reports that show the strengths and weaknesses of each player, group, school or region, in order to create a plan that best fits their needs. When playing TAK-TAK-TAK, the information is stored in the database, allowing the reports to provide real-time statistics regarding individual player’s progress in concepts and subjects that our educational video games cover. This allows the plans to be nourished with the child's performance.

This first phase of LabTak will be launched in 2020 as a concept in order to help teachers make their plans in an efficient and effective way. We are currently piloting this version and looking forward to carry out a Randomized Controlled Test (RCT) after it. 

Next steps in development

It’s necessary to build a fellowship environment between teachers and a space where they can be accompanied in their work in order to build a more cooperative and supportive scholar culture to face challenges. As a solution,  LabTak will generate a learning community through blog and forums, allowing a space for communication, collaboration, and feedback in the experience of teaching through technology and gaming (Digital game-based learning). Also, through webinars and MOOCs, teachers will access to resources that enrich their own learning. This way the research will connect to the practice, and teacher’s actions inspire other teachers. 

To support teachers’ knowledge they will access to pedagogical information and educational contents via LabTak, that guide them in the integration of digital tools into their teaching, favoring their development of  digital skills. 

When LabTak’s development completes, teachers will easily attend the particularities of their students by designing a strategy that triggers and detonates knowledge, reaffirms concepts, motivates, among others.  Also, they´ll be able to choose a predesigned strategy that best adapts to their group’s needs. This way, each teacher and/or community can decide the pedagogical strategies that work best within their planning and that best solve their particular needs.

LabTak is a free platform,  developed with the help UX experts, which makes its design very intuitive. It is thought to benefit communities from the base of the pyramid so, this implies that it is a friendly and easy to use platform, which needs minimum hardware requirements, and serves with or without connectivity.; it also contains regular support and advice, as well as constant support through email or phone.

In addition to this, and unlike other existing planning platforms, LabTak will be the only platform available in Spanish to allow any Spanish- speaking teacher to design their own lesson planning and consult real time reports. It will create a framework to turn teachers into team members. Teachers will be able to find vast content such as papers, activities, videos, lesson plans, strategies, among others. The importance of this is that by customizing learning, teachers and students will be able to solve problems and integrate necessary skills from new jobs and industries, and be prepared for current needs in a globalized world.

A quality education in the first years generates sufficient knowledge to advance to the next educational levels. This way young students ensure more educational years with better learning, in the long term allows them to aspire to a better life quality in their community. Pedagogical research established a high correlation between fun and learning, and technology helps the development of digital, socio-emotional and educational skills.

The evaluations displayed showed that learning achievement through video games is maximized when there’s teacher intervention. That’s why teachers also benefit from using LabTak, while adapting to 21st century necessities and integrating the use of ICT in their teaching methods.

Working hours for teachers increase as students’ needs become more complex and administrative burdens increase; some teachers even consider dropping out due to their workload.

With LabTak, teachers are engaged in activities that could be automated using existing technology; that translates into approximately 13 hours per week. In addition, collaborative platforms allow teachers to search and find useful material published by other members of the community. 

What will teachers do with the additional hours for the application of technology? Spend time with their families or reinvest in the improvement of education and personalized guidance. Achieving these savings in teacher time, is mainly thanks to the incorporation of educational technology in their work. 

Inoma seeks to provide greater opportunities for children and reduce the educational and technological gap. These actions, in the long term, will lead to less economic inequality as a result in educational improvement.

Currently we have developed 100 video games and reached 542,451 children and 16,335 teachers and / or parents with the TAK-TAK-TAK System.  By the end of 2020 we have set out to reach  650,000 children in TAK-TAK-TAK and 22,000 teachers in LabTak. By the end of 2024, 900,000 children in TAK-TAK-TAK and and 25,000 in LabTak. 

Along with our implementation of TAK-TAK-TAK in schools, we have benefited more than 16 thousand teachers and parents who will now can access to LabTak. The users who had access to pedagogical information of each of our video games now, will access to the new LabTak site. 

These faithful users, that will become members of the new LabTak educational community that will be nurtured thanks to the experiences, knowledge and suggestions of other teachers. The videos, strategies, forums, MOOCs, video games and other elements that inhabit the site, will serve as the basis for creating personalized teaching plans. These plans will represent a universe of possibilities to work in teaching and revalue educational work, while benefiting students. 

By 2020 LabTak will have a test of its first phase (planning tool, content library and reports) and redesign its user experience if necessary. Inoma is looking for grants and donations for developing the next phase and create a teaching community which will nourish thanks to parents’ and teachers’ interaction and feedback: doubts, achievements and development of their own teaching strategies. It will be a space for communication and learning, enriching content and creating a deeper learning among teachers and parents.They can track player’s performance by topic and learning area, understand the correspondence of the games to the curriculum, get to know suggestions on how to use games as a teaching tool, and useful statistics on their student’s performance. 

By 2024 we have set out to reach 2530 thousand teachers and parents registered in LabTak. By then, LabTak will cover 100% of the concepts and skills that cover the elementary school curriculum with own developed pedagogical strategies; currently we have covered 30% of them. It will also include more strategies created by the consolidated community, allowing each user/member to meet the different educational solutions they implement with their students in order to solve their particular needs. This will allow the system to unfold more easily and favor the creation of a community. 

By increasing the strategies we promote greater growth, permanence and, therefore, greater transformation and impact on our beneficiaries and communities. In the short term, better education is achieved; in the long term, less economic and social inequality. 

1.Finishing the alliance with the SEP (Mexican Ministry of Education): if this happens, it will difficult  beneficiaries goal. For that reason we are searching for other latin american government alliances.

2.Economic difficulties: the country's situation apparently entails NGOs to lack of donations, for that situation we developed a business plan in order to continue the deployment and development. 

3.The deployment of the system out of Mexico complicates the possibility of having feedback and face-to-face support for the integration and appropriation of the LabTak, as well as help to solve connectivity problems, pedagogical advice, analysis of community problems, among others. For that we create a help desk and we are looking forward generating a community via LabTak to know and attend the teachers experience.

4.If we want to deploy LabTak in countries where the native language is not Spanish, we have to translate the video games TAK-TAK-TAK video games, sites and support material to English. This can be very expensive and complicated. We have done alliances with people that help us pro bono with translations.

5.When we work in other countries (now it is the case of the deployment in the refugee camps), we are at the expense of the decisions of that country, as well as of its internal and foreign policy, in which we have no interference. That is why our team of specialists design pedagogical strategies according to the needs of each community with the objective of operating optimally and without conflicts.

1. Have methodologies that verify the optimus use of the tool  to avoid/decrease unfunctional risks. We constantly evaluate the video games and platforms to make sure they have the desired quality and effectiveness.

2. We diversified our strategy to increase our alliances and reach our goal. The Mexican Ministry of Education has helped us reach many schools around the country, but if for any reason this alliance is broken, we have been increasing our collaborations with other organizations to continue helping children in public schools. Also we are working with Colombian Ministry of education al looking forward to make alliances with other countries.

3. Internet connectivity has been, and is still a big challenge for us, because of the lack of connectivity in public mexican schools. However, Inoma has developed offline alternatives so teachers and students can enjoy the benefits of LabTak and TAK-TAK-TAK, such as USB and servers.

4. We are updating our business plan in order to be economically self sufficient without depending on grants or donations. This way, we reduce the economic risk and continue to develop our games and System’s deployment. 

5. Online and offline strategies are being developed so problems due to geographical distance don’t affect the system’s implementation. 

6. An interdisciplinary team is in charge of achieving the adaptations of all the video games games and pedagogical resources to English language. 

7. We seek to maintain relations with international organizations and work within a framework of legality.

• Research and Data analysis: 1 full-time worker.

• Technology and videog ames: 2 full-time workers and 3 social service students.

• Education: 1 full-time worker and 1 social service student.

• Deployment: 2 full-time workers and 1 social service student.

• Institutional Development: 2 full-time workers and 5 social service students.

• Administration and Legal: 2 full-time workers and 1 social service students. 

• General coordinator: 1 full-time worker.

• Managing Director: 1 full-time worker.

Inoma's philosophy is to integrate experts in each activity so we can have a great product. All of Inoma’s collaborators are leaders of the projects but at the same time they work with very well prepared suppliers providers (depending on the project). This work flow promotes lower costs and lets us achieve our goals by making the organization profitable. The development and maintenance of the platforms of the project are carried out by a group of experts in technology, video games and education, in such a way that the system is always reinventing itself and adapting to the current technological and pedagogical challenges. External institutions constantly verify our contents to make sure we have the highest quality standards so that every decision taken leads to the best outcome possible. 

Inoma was founded on 2011, but its concept and operation began in 2009. By then, it devised a free innovative educational system: TAK-TAK-TAK educational video games, by bringing together technology and fun. They are free and available for children worldwide. 

Awards such as: best mobile content in Learning and Education for the World Summit Award contest, Audience Choice in Scale by Creator Awards Mexico from We Work, Honorable Mention for TAK-TAK-TAK Science Video Games by Science in Action, finalists in the WISE Awards 2018, regional winner of Latin America for being an innovative project aimed at improving results of students learning by Reimagine Education and finalists in the E-Learning category also by Reimagine Education.

Inoma has have more than 60 partners with TAK-TAK-TAK educational video games. Our principal outgoing alliances are:

• Ministry of Education in Mexico: endorsed the TAK-TAK-TAK educational video games, thay are available in diverse platforms they have developed, which lets us reach more children and teachers.

• CIYOTA Organization: the alliance allowed TAK-TAK-TAK system enter Coburwas Primary School, within a refugee camp in Uganda. 

• Koinonia Educational Centre: the alliance opened the doors to TAK-TAK-TAK system to this school in a marginal area of Nairobi, Kenya.

• Fundación Haciendas del Mundo Maya integration of the TAK-TAK-TAK in the communitary libraries of Fundación Haciendas del Mundo Maya in the Mayan communities in Campeche and Yucatan.

• Gonzalo Río Arronte Foundation: Inoma design and implemented two TAK-TAK-TAK video games to help students in the Mazahua indigenous community develop their social-emotional skills, make decisions in risk situations, as well as decisions related to the consumption of substances harmful to health.

Inoma`s partner for the design of LabTak:

• Fundación Moisés Itzkowich: Inoma carried investigation about the needs and interests of the teachers, design a LabTak site as a solution for their central problem and evaluated the experience of the site.

Our direct beneficiaries teachers and parents (LabTak), who indirectly benefit  children of the bottom of the pyramid. The global context demands the use of ICT in the educational ambit because a student that  relate to technology can, consequently, re adapt constantly, relate with his environment and be a part of a society based in the role of digital technologies.

Our intervention model has achieved in the teachers the development of digital skills and the development of pedagogical DGBL strategies ad hoc for their specific needs, that impact their students in the current year and their next students. By doing this, our vision is to diminish social and economic vulnerability to decrease poverty, digital gap, and to promote sustainable development, therefore a better quality of life, in or out of their community. 

To achieve this social change we work hand in hand with educational and/or local authorities and with our partners, donors and suppliers. As an NGO, our platforms are free to our beneficiaries and our revenue is mainly from donations but we combined our business model with recovery fees to be economically sustainable.

Sustainability and expansion: This way, more children and teachers can benefit from this noble tool and we can fulfill our purpose of reaching more than 30,000 teachers and 1 million children around the world by 2023.

As we are an NGO, we have been funded primarily by donations from public and private institutions, with which we have been able to reach our goals to date. Apart from donations, our business plan includes the collection of recovery fees from:

1. Direct sales to private educational institutions providing them personalized educational strategies, face to face teacher training, progress reports, technical check-ups of media classrooms.

2. Direct sales to public educational institutions. We are part of a national strategy in Mexico where public schools can buy official educational services. 

3. Collaborations Ministries of Education. Continue with our alliances with the Mexican Ministries of Education at state level who finance our activities locally. This allows us to reach more of our target users.

4. Direct sales through LabTak with organic users. LabTak is a free tool but it also contemplates personalized content includes: educational strategies, moocs, progress reports, among otherswith a recovery fee to continue investing in the generation and curation of the content.

5. Investors through startup funds and venture capital for continuing the development of the site in innovation of technology and education. 

6. Expanding our market. We are seeking support from mentors to be known by international stakeholders such as schools, professors, investors and donors that can help us in the process of expanding to Latin America, English speaking countries. For that purpose, currently we are investing resources to translate all our products and services to English.

We have created an effective and efficient educational tool that optimized the design and innovation of the planning. Solve will help us finish the development of the site and its offline solutions. This will allow a generation of a learning community, enrich teachers learning, and unfold the system more easily. With variety and flexibility of content and pedagogical resources the a growth in users and permanence rises. We are looking to adapt technology trends in basic education, for increase productivity and prepared new generation into the new jobs and industries. This tool will encourage entrepreneurship and creativity in problem solving. 

We are convinced that this educational solution can impact millions of communities on the planet. For that reason, we are looking to make partnerships with MIT Solver network of professionals to improve our product’s areas of opportunity, strengthen it to have an effective and efficient scalability and expansion. Also, we want to have access to MIT Solver funding, media and conference exposure, and technological mentorship, as one of the main pillars of this project is technology.

From the beginning, Inoma has worked with the philosophy of being integrators and has achieved more than 100 alliances with different sectors (private, public and education, technology, etc.). However, we consider it fundamental to build these alliances with the international community as well, and we would love to be part of the MIT Solver network because they are committed, open-minded and are the best in technological matters.

Inoma’s partnerships' goals are to grow, expand and sustain our projects. Alliances with UNICEF and UNESCO could help develop teaching strategies where children learn about their rights, the environment and climate change; contributing to build inclusive knowledge societies. Also that they are prepared to work demands focused on technology, and not to be unemployed or underemployed and create prosperous and sustainable livelihoods for themselves.

Alliances with English educational sites such as: Pulitzer centre, Common Sense, and Digital Promise (Learner Variability Project) could help LabTak enrich its content because they have valuable programs of education that could be translated and integrated into LabTak. This will make the content of the classes provide students with greater knowledge, clear explanations and give them tools on how problems are fought in the 21st century in developed countries.

MIT’s network of professionals could help improve the areas of opportunity of our product through research and innovation.