Wonder.io

Interactive books struggling readers with gamified questions and social competition.

Many children in Thailand and the Philippians do not have access to a quality education. Whether they drop out before secondary school or don't have access to quality classrooms, these young readers score well below OECD average in reading.

Wonder Stories reengages struggling readers by providing a library of interactive, gamified books that children can access from their smart phones. 

Wonder Stories can be used now at Wonder.io 

Families from the Philippians and Thailand have started using it through word of mouth alone.

From our research with low income communities in Denver, we've found that for many struggling readers, it's not only a question of access, but also a will to learn. 

With Wonder Stories, social completion and gamified questions boost struggling reader's motivation, which is critical when children are in settings with no teachers or a high student to teacher ratio, which often is the case in Thailand and the Philippians.

Our app has helped transform students from refusing to read more than 2-3 sentences to asking if they can read 3 or more books in a setting.

We hope that our app and stories can be translated into more languages, and we can work with local distribution partners and communities to bring this interactive reading library to more families of reluctant readers.

For many children in Thailand and the Philippians, they either do not go to school or drop out by Secondary, especially for young girls. This puts a substantial burden on children's own will to learn. Their reading skills will improve based on their own desire to read and access to books. Without a quality teacher or mentor to help them, most struggling readers will give up.

Our hope is Wonder Stories can provide a rich, translated library of digital books that will engage and enable young readers, regardless of their educational environment in the Philippines and Thailand.

While Wonder Stories is accessible to all children, it works best for children who are behind in reading. Wonder Stories is built with strong motivation levers that children behind especially need.

Our hope is to provide Wonder Stories to Thailand and Philippine schools that do not have access to rich libraries or need reading material to engage and help those readers who are behind.

Wonder.io is accessible globally and Thailand and the Philippines are in the top 20 countries that use our products.

We are currently looking for distribution partners to help us bring Wonder.io to families and schools of struggling readers.

Wonder Stories is a digital solution proven to help low income children behind in reading better engage with reading.

We believe the needs Wonder Stories addresses can also be found in South East Asia: low reading confidence, no will to read, a lack of access of quality books, no reason to read, etc.

It's our goal to further share the Wonder Stories formula across the globe.

Dr. Elliott Hedman

The future of learning to read is interactive books. Early childhood reading is dominated by paper publishers like Penguin and Scholastic, and very little innovation has occurred with Children Books since the printing press.

By co-creating with children in low-income community, we've shown the value of digital books in the future. Wonder.io books:

-Ask interactive questions every other page, keeping kids engaged and attentive

-Provide social competition like Kahoot!

-Make texts accessible (especially for children with ADHD or Dyslexia) by only showing a few set of words each turn.

-Provide written texts that work in these settings. Stories are built so fun, inspirational questions can be asked at an engaging, fast pace.

Yes! We work daily at the Boys & Girls Club and Denver Public School system to see how children engage with reading. During Covid-19, Dr. Elliott Hedman was employed as the Boys & Girls Club literacy specialist and implemented the program for one of the few in person reading opportunities available in Denver. 

Our findings have shown that children who will not read 1-2 sentences within 2 or 3 uses of Wonder Stories will actively read 3 to 4 books a session and ask for more. We're gathering data now about how this affect's their reading test scores.

Wonder.io is a website and app as foundational technology.

But the technology that differentiates us is we have "cracked the code" to make engaging reading experiences for kids. Our books do not look like regular book but instead use a trade secret method of engaging and keeping reader's attention through gamified questions and social competition. 

When our authors work with us they have to go through a training process as the writing is so different - how do you write stories that have kids asking and answering questions, participating in the story? We've discovered this solution through 4 years of prototyping with struggling readers in low income communities.

Our end goal is to have children seeking reading opportunities more often, which leads to improve literacy.

Children seek more reading opportunities when they have

1. Access to quality books.

2. Motivation to read the books

Wonder Stories provide children access to books. Our evidence also shows that children are more motivated and excited to read with gamified questions and social competition.

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We are measuring impact on a local scale at the Denver Public Schools and Boys & Girls comparing children's reading test scores.

From a global impact scale we measure how often users login and where they log in from.

Currently our main focus is make Wonder.io bug free with over 100 texts available.

We are also working on forming a partnership with multiple large organizations for better distribution.

In 3 years, we hope to expand our library of books to have stories that are more accessible to 1st and 2nd grade readers.

We also hope to translate our texts into other languages.

Within 3 years we hope to have a clear case study of the impact Wonder Stories has on children's literacy scores.

In 5 years, we hope to be a key provider to other reading platforms for engaging, interactive texts. We also hope to be a global brand providing texts in many different languages for struggling readers across the globe.

We want Wonder.io to be free to help those children most in need. If it's free we don't have a budget for marketing. Without a budget in marketing it's hard to grow the impact of our company. 

We're currently working with some large global companies to potentially partner with them - providing them a platform to make digital books while helping them boost the educational value of their brand.

In the US, we are looking at creating Wonder Stories after school clubs which are in demand with a shortage of teachers and educational staff.

Wonder Stories is a spinout of mPath( www.buildempathy.com )

Dr. Elliott Hedman is a consultant for many different companies on how to create better emotional experiences for their customers. Elliott saw a clear need for more engaging reading experiences that wasn't being adressed.

mPath (buildlempathy.com) is a spinout from IDEO and the MIT Media Lab based on Elliott's research on making sensors that measure children's emotional responses.

2

Elliott full time

Aaron Cephers, our programmer, part time.

Elliott builds great experiences by helping organizations understand the emotions of their customers. He earned his PhD at the MIT Media Lab using psychophysiological sensors to measure emotions in a new, objective way. Previously, Elliott worked at IDEO as a design researcher, where he learned how to combine sensors, design, and emotions. Today, he runs mPath, a design consulting firm. Elliott has had the privilege of designing a vast range of emotions, from the excitement of using Google, to audience engagement of the Blue Man Group, to customers’ confidence at Lowe’s Home Improvement, to the anxiety of children with autism in therapy. By looking at the detailed experiences of customers, Elliott shows companies new ways of innovating and adding value through the customer experience. When not pondering emotions, Elliott is often found playing board games with his two brothers or painting a Chinese landscape.

Elliott founded mPath and has advised companies like Curriculum Associates, Classcraft, ThinkCerca, Education.com, Scholastic, Lowe's, and Bestbuy on how to create new innovations.

We are an enrichment program for the Denver Public School Systems.

We'll be working with the Boys & Girls Club again once Covid-19 restrictions allow us to.

I can talk privately about other partnership we are building now.

Octava and I both care about making reading more accessible. I believe that there are many children who need access to better reading experiences across the world. It's my hope that Octavia can help connect me to businessess in systems in Thailand and the Philippines who would be interested in marketing and distributing Wonder.io more globally to children in need.

Wonder Stories has made a small impact in Thailand and Philippines with no effort on my end. The only way we are going to make more of an impact is by partnering with local organizations that share the same goal of Octavia of bringing literacy to populations much in need. I know companies are out there that care about this. I do not know them.

(I know and am connected with many of them in the US)

-Elliott