Memo

Solution: MEMO is an intelligent and gamified edtech platform that helps students practice and acquire the 4C skills (Collaboration, Critical thinking, Creativity and Communication). The Solution leverages data analytics and artificial intelligence to optimize learning outcomes for teachers and students, towards improving the learner's performances in STEAM (STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics).  Memo is designed for children from age 2 to 14. Memo promotes collaboration between educators and parents by providing in-app coaching with resources that will aid the teachers and parents in the facilitation of the 4Cs within and outside the Classroom

According to a WEF(World economic forum) survey,  these four skills, collectively referred to as the 4Cs should be incorporated into learning - Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration and Creativity. According to WEF and P21, they are pivotal to improved learning outcomes. Unfortunately, these skills are not taught across many schools in Africa. A 2018 by the Centre for Universal Education says over 61million children in Africa does not possess these skills. Teachers are not also equipped to facilitate the acquisition of these skills. The Brookings Institute says that less than 50% of teachers in pimary schools in Uganda, Lesotho and Mozambique will score a high point in a test meant for age 12. If this is not salvaged, Africa may become home to 90% of the world's poor population by 2030, with many children ending up as low income earners for lack of critical skills for the future

We are helping educators and parents prepare children for the future through the acquisition of the 4Cs in early childhood and beyond. These skills are Critical thinking, Communication, Creativity, and Collaboration. We remove the guesswork by providing realtime analyses and suggesting learning resources that can amplify the acquisition of these effectively. With MEMO, children will be better positioned and prepared for the future of work, and the opportunity to be prosperous. With improved collaboration between parents and teachers, there will be better learning outcomes, and Africa will be better for it. Families will be happier and poverty will decline. Our vision is to expand across Africa and provide offline resources that will promote the inclusion of families and children in rural areas into becoming beneficiaries of improved learning. 

MEMO product has four major components.

1)  Helping children educators measure the acquisition of the 4Cs and how to optimize learning for each child

2) Training educators through in-product coaching modules that help them facilitate the acquisition of the 4Cs in learning

3) Help the children learn and cultivate the 4Cs in a fun and engaging manner

4) fostering collaboration between the educators and parents of these children towards achieving better learning outcomes as it relates to the acquisition of the 4Cs

How it works: A child can practise and measure their fluency in the 4Cs on the platform. The computer collects data as the child interacts with the platform. The data is analysed and a report is given that details the strengths and weakness of the child as it relates to the 4Cs and how it is/may impact their performance in STEAM subjects. Educators can use this report to improve learning outcomes and design personalised learning pathways for the child. Educators can also use this platform to practise and measure their abilities in facilitating the 4Cs. Resources abound on the platform to help both the educator and child optimize their performances and achieve immense results. These documents can even be printed for use offline by these educators. Parents may also subscribe to this platform and help their children engage with the platform at home. The teachers can grant each of these parents access to the personalized learning pathways designed for their children. This will aid collaboration between the parents and teachers, towards raising a skilled and globally competent child from childhood

We leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to simulate an effective acquisition of the 4Cs through a blend of games and structured content. Our platform-based solution is data driven and is designed with Africa in mind, with more than half of its population living in poverty. Our solution helps educators to design personalized learning for each child or a group of child with identified weaknesses in the fluency of applying the 4Cs within and outside the classroom. Africa is a culturally sensitive and diverse continent; we will use innovative technology to deliver our content in various languages to promote inclusion  

MEMO is a software with with web and mobile options, designed to help children acquire and practice the 4Cs – Critical thinking, Communication, Creativity, Collaboration. MEMO is data driven and will use the data to improve learning outcomes for these children by suggesting learning pathways and helping the educators to design a personalized learning structure that will aid the child in practicing the 4Cs within and outside the classroom.

As our machine learning improves, we will be able deliver a more robust experience. MEMO will adopt existing translation technology to deliver the programme in diverse languages

Earlier this year, we held the Young Innovators Bootcamp for 26 chidren, a Free  5-day programme where we train children in underserved communities the skills for the future. During this project, there was child who attended one of the most expensive private secondary school in Nigeria; he was the only person who had heard of, and practiced a bit of the 4Cs. There we learnt that only the richest may have access to acquiring these 4Cs. After the training, most of the parents requested for a follow up. Unfortunately, in person training is usually not scalable.

Key activities:

• learners interact with the platform. Test their understanding of the 4Cs and learn how to apply the 4Cs
• parents are taught about the 4Cs and how to help the children practice the skills
• Educators are taught how to facilitate the acquisition and practise of these skills within and outside the classroom

Output

• Learner gains the competency in the 4Cs
• Parents gains the competency in the 4Cs
• Educators gains the competency in the 4Cs

Short Term and long term Outcomes

• Learner demonstrates the ability to use the 4Cs
• Parents demonstrates the understanding of the 4Cs and collaborate with educators to help the learner practice the 4Cs
• Educators demonstrates the ability to facilitate and design learning modules to improve the acquisition of the 4Cs in the classroom and based on the subjects taught

Since conception of the idea in December 2018, we have reached 26 children directly and over 100 indirectly through other platforms. We have equally engaged over 15 parents who have commented on the impact of our work on their children. We have interacted directly with over 36 teachers, helping to become better facilitators of the 4Cs towards improving learning outcomes.

In one year, with a more scalable solution, we can reach 500,000 children, parents and educators

In 5 years, we will reach over 20 million children, educators and parents across Africa

In the next 12 months, we expect to have reached 500,000 children educators and parents respectively. We expect that this children living in rural communities would have been able to acquire and effectively utilise the 4Cs. 

For the parents and teachers, we expect them to have increased their capacity and knowledge to support their children's learning, leading to improvements in student performance . In 5 years, by 2024, we expect to reach at least 10 million beneficiaries through the platform across Africa

1. Challenge of convincing school owners to adopt the platform: We will allow them access the platform for a time so they can understand how it works and its relevance to their overall goal
2. Deploying it in areas without electricity: We will have a minimal version that can be delivered on paper for the pupils to be engaged with. We will partner with local communities to setup solar powered computer centres where children can go at scheduled times to engage the platform. Alternatively, since we are likely to have NYSC members who are deployed all over the nation, we will partner with these NYSC to hire corps members as agents who will be trained to deliver the experience to the teachers and through their laptops.
3. Data connectivity: We will design the platform in such a manner that it can be loaded and engaged offline. We will also design it in such a manner that parents with smart phones can still subscribe to the platform so that the kids can receive the learnings in the form of text messages on low end phones.

• Apathetic School Owners: We will allow them access the platform for a time so they can understand how it works and its relevance to their overall goal
• Deploying it in areas without electricity: Electricity remains a major challenge in major parts of Africa, though the prospects are improving, it still remains a major challenge. We will have a minimal version that can be delivered on paper for the pupils to be engaged with. We will partner with local communities to setup solar powered computer centres where children can go at scheduled times to engage the platform. A set of youth volunteers will be trained to deliver the product, a youth corp program already run within country will be engaged to do this.

• Data connectivity: We will design the platform in such a manner that it can be loaded and engaged offline. We will also design it in such a manner that parents without smart phones can still subscribe to the platform using USSD technology .
• Language: We will be engaging with local and leverage networks of young people part of a Nationwide initiative that posts graduate to several communities all around the country to reach them in the short term. The long term plan is to use language tech to reach them. 

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We have initiated projects, and have been part of projects geared towards improving the quality of education. Kayode Ajomole, a member of the MEMO team, volunteered with the Renovate a School Project for one year. The Renovate a School project is focused on rehabilitating public primary schools in Ondo State.  We painted and plastered several classrooms during the time I served as a volunteer. As a corps' member serving in Akwa Ibom in 2013, Kayode mobilized friends to teach mathematics and English to children living in that village at no cost. Recently, my partner and I, Samuel Ajayi who is also a member of this team, held the Young Innovators Bootcamp. The Young Innovators Bootcamp aims to help underserved children explore their potentials and use technology to solve social problems. Twenty Six children benefited from the first bootcamp. These children were taught critical thinking, design thinking, problem solving, collaboration, 3D printing, coding and many more. We are passionate and have cultivated the skills required for industry success over the last 5years.

We have 2 full stack developers on our team

Between all the team members, we have over 10 years experience spanning industries such as Media, technology and education with both local and international companies including Google. We have led product development teams and have taken courses internationally and locally on running successful businesses.

Our Advisor is a retired teacher with international experience. 

Class Climax: We are currently working with an education consulting firm in Nigeria to adequately develop the proper modules and access to schools in their network. 

Class Climax has over 30years experience working with schools across Nigeria sub-haran Africa. Their experience and networks is critical to us to help develop the learning modules on the platform and to access schools

Our major business model is to generate revenue through licensing fees to schools based on a per student basis. We currently have four schools on the waiting list at the moment for the solution, we are using the freemium model to generate significant interest and adoption from school owners.

Memo will also be delivering to organizations seeking to develop their staff in the 4Cs as a part of our revenue generation drive. 

We will also be publishing reports of our findings to the public in order to generate interests from policy makers and the public, a major part of these report will feature the MEMO index which rate Countries and States schools as regards their current level in the 4Cs, the report will be sold to local education stakeholders. 

Currently MEMO has been growing due to word of mouth and goodwill, we intend to develop an in house sales team to drive revenue growth upwards within the next 1 year.  

Memo will be generating funds through the following means;

1. Memo will generate funds from the licensing of the products to schools. 
2. We will also be generating revenues from consultancy from schools and organizations who want to improve their organizations 4C output. 
3. MEMO will also be applying for grants and funding from both local and international organizations. 
4. Equity funding will be sought but this will be after MEMO has shown considerable growth and for further investment. 
5. We will make money through the development of educational resource materials that will improve the learners acquisition of the 4Cs. These materials includes, board games, books and other tangible 3-dimensional equipments.

1. Access to Solve’s cross-sector community in other to build valuable connections and partnerships. Most importantly, We need the right exposure to best practises across different communities.

2. Access to mentorship about product development and how to effectively scale our impact

3. Exposure to investors and board members

Rockefeller Foundation 

Bill and Melinda Gates foundation for their amazing work in Education

To leverage their highly developed methodologies in scaling solutions globally across low income regions. For mentorship and access to grants

The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of individuals and our global community through neuroscience research and information technology. Similarly, our solution leverages Artificial intelligence in several ways. The funding will be deployed to develop a robust algorithm that gives deep insights about neurocognitive advances made by the learners who use the platform. It will equally be use to richly research into developing appropriate learning pathways for the learners based on their behaviours and practise of the 4Cs. Because our solution will equally leverage natural language processing to enable access in rural areas where English is not the lingua franca, the fund will be deployed to train and develop natural language processing algorithms

We  will use the prize to scale our impact.

Our solution is highly data driven with thousands of data touch points designed to help the system learn how to best the learner improve their acquisition of the 4Cs. We will also get data from the parents and educators interactions with the platform. These data will be trained and used to predict and improve learning outcomes.