Today, over 77 percent of Americans own a smartphone with access to the world\u2019s information and near-limitless learning resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet nearly 36 million adults in the US are constrained by low literacy skills<\/a>, excluding them from professional opportunities, prospects of upward mobility, and full engagement with their children\u2019s education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And beyond its direct impact, low literacy rates affect us all. Improving literacy among adults is predicted to save $230 billion in national healthcare costs and could result in US labor productivity increases of up to 2.5 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the board, exponential technologies<\/a> are making demonetized learning tools, digital training platforms, and literacy solutions more accessible than ever before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With rising automation and major paradigm shifts underway in the job market, these tools not only promise to make today\u2019s workforce more versatile, but could play an invaluable role in breaking the poverty cycles often associated with low literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just three years ago, the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation joined forces to tackle this intractable problem, launching a $7 million Adult Literacy XPRIZE<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Challenging teams to develop smartphone apps that significantly increase literacy skills among adult learners in just 12 months, the competition brought five prize teams to the fore, each targeting multiple demographics across the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, after four years of research, prototyping, testing, and evaluation, XPRIZE has just this week announced two grand prize winners: Learning Upgrade<\/a> and People ForWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this blog, I\u2019ll be exploring the nuts and bolts of our two winning teams and how exponential technologies are beginning to address rapidly shifting workforce demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We\u2019ll discuss:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s dive in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emphasizing the importance of accessible mediums and scalability, the Adult Literacy XPRIZE called for teams to create mobile solutions that lower the barrier to entry, encourage persistence, develop relevant learning content, and can scale nationally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Outperforming the competition in two key demographic groups in aggregate\u2014native English speakers and English language learners\u2014teams Learning Upgrade<\/a> and People ForWords<\/a> together claimed the prize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To win, both organizations successfully generated the greatest gains between a pre- and post-test, administered one year apart to learners in a 12-month field test across Los Angeles, Dallas, and Philadelphia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prize money in hand, Learning Upgrade and People ForWords are now scaling up their solutions, each targeting a key demographic in America\u2019s pursuit of adult literacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Based in San Diego, Learning Upgrade has developed an Android and iOS app that helps students learn English and math through video, songs, and gamification. Offering a total of 21 courses from kindergarten through adult education, Learning Upgrade touts a growing platform of over 900 lessons spanning English, reading, math, and even GED prep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To further personalize each student\u2019s learning, Learning Upgrade measures time-on-task and builds out formative performance assessments, granting teachers a quantified, real-time view of each student\u2019s progress across both lessons and criteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Specialized in English reading skills, Dallas-based People ForWords offers a similarly delocalized model with its mobile game \u201cCodex: Lost Words of Atlantis.\u201d Based on an archaeological adventure storyline, the app features an immersive virtual environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Set in the Atlantis Library (now with a 3D rendering underway), Codex takes its students through narrative-peppered lessons covering everything from letter-sound practice to vocabulary reinforcement in a hidden object game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But while both mobile apps have recruited initial piloting populations, the key to success is scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Using a similar incentive prize competition structure to drive recruitment, the second phase of the XPRIZE is a $1 million Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition. For 15 months, the competition will challenge organizations, communities, and individuals alike to onboard adult learners onto both prize-winning platforms and fellow finalist team apps, AmritaCREATE and Cell-Ed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each awarded $125,000 for participation in the Communities Competition, AmritaCREATE and Cell-Ed bring yet other nuanced advantages to the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While AmritaCREATE curates culturally appropriate e-content relevant to given life skills, Cell-Ed takes a learn-on-the-go approach, offering micro-lessons, on-demand essential skills training, and individualized coaching on any mobile device, no internet required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although all these cases target slightly different demographics and problem niches, they converge upon common phenomena: mobility, efficiency, life skill relevance, personalized learning, and practicability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what better to scale these benefits than AI and immersive virtual environments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the case of education\u2019s growing mobility, 5G and the explosion of connectivity speeds will continue to drive a learn-anytime-anywhere education model, whereby adult users learn on the fly, untethered to web access or rigid time strictures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I\u2019ve explored in a previous blog on AI-crowd collaboration<\/a>, we might also see the rise of AI learning consultants responsible for processing data on how you<\/em> learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quantifying and analyzing your interaction with course modules, where you get stuck, where you thrive, and what tools cause you ease or frustration, each user\u2019s AI trainer might then issue personalized recommendations based on crowd feedback.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adding a human touch, each app\u2019s hired teaching consultants would thereby be freed to track many more students\u2019 progress at once, vetting AI-generated tips and adjustments, and offering life coaching along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lastly, virtual learning environments\u2014and, one day, immersive VR<\/a>\u2014will facilitate both speed and retention, two of the most critical constraints as learners age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I often reference, people generally remember only 10 percent of what we see, 20 percent of what we hear, and 30 percent of what we read\u2026. But over a staggering 90 percent <\/em>of what we do or experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By introducing gamification, immersive testing activities, and visually rich sensory environments, adult literacy platforms have a winning chance at scalability, retention, and user persistence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond literacy, however, virtual and augmented reality have already begun disrupting the professional training market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As projected by ABI Research<\/a>, the enterprise VR training market is on track to exceed $6.3 billion in value by 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Leading the charge, Walmart has already implemented VR across 200 Academy training centers, running over 45 modules and simulating everything from unusual customer requests to a Black Friday shopping rush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then in September of last year, Walmart committed to a 17,000-headset order of the Oculus Go to equip every US Supercenter, neighborhood market, and discount store with VR-based employee training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the engineering world, Bell Helicopter is using VR to massively expedite development and testing of its latest aircraft, FCX-001. Partnering with Sector 5 Digital and HTC VIVE, Bell found it could concentrate a typical six-year aircraft design process into the course of six months, turning physical mockups into CAD-designed virtual replicas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But beyond the design process itself, Bell is now one of a slew of companies pioneering VR pilot tests and simulations with real-world accuracy. Seated in a true-to-life virtual cockpit, pilots have now tested countless iterations of the FCX-001 in virtual flight, drawing directly onto the 3D model and enacting aircraft modifications in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And in an expansion of our virtual senses, several key players are already working on haptic feedback. In the case of VR flight, French company Go Touch VR is now partnering with software developer FlyInside on fingertip-mounted haptic tech for aviation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dramatically reducing time and trouble required for VR-testing pilots, they aim to give touch-based confirmation of every switch and dial activated on virtual flights, just as one would experience in a full-sized cockpit mockup. Replicating texture, stiffness, and even the sensation of holding an object, these piloted devices contain a suite of actuators to simulate everything from a light touch to higher-pressured contact, all controlled by gaze and finger movements.When it comes to other high-risk simulations, virtual and augmented reality have barely scratched the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Firefighters can now combat virtual wildfires with new platforms like FLAIM Trainer or TargetSolutions. And thanks to the expansion of medical AR\/VR services like 3D4Medical or Echopixel, surgeons might soon perform operations on annotated organs and magnified incision sites, speeding up reaction times and vastly improving precision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But perhaps most urgently, virtual reality will offer an immediate solution to today\u2019s constant industry turnover and large-scale re-education demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n VR educational facilities<\/a> with exact replicas of anything from large industrial equipment to minute circuitry will soon give anyone a second chance at the 21st-century job market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want to become an electric, autonomous vehicle mechanic at age 44? Throw on a demonetized VR module and learn by doing<\/em>, testing your prototype iterations at almost zero cost and with no risk of harming others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Want to be a plasma physicist and play around with a virtual nuclear fusion reactor? Now you\u2019ll be able to simulate results and test out different tweaks, logging Smart Educational Record credits in the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As tomorrow\u2019s career model shifts from a \u201cone-and-done graduate degree\u201d to continuous lifelong education, professional VR-based re-education will allow for a continuous education loop, reducing the barrier to entry for anyone wanting to try their hand at a new industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As VR and artificial intelligence converge with demonetized mobile connectivity, we are finally witnessing an era in which no one will be left behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whether in pursuit of fundamental life skills, professional training, linguistic competence, or specialized retooling, users of all ages, career paths, income brackets, and goals are now encouraged to be students, no longer condemned to stagnancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Traditional constraints need no longer prevent non-native speakers from gaining an equal foothold, or specialists from pivoting into new professions, or low-income parents from staking new career paths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As exponential technologies drive democratized access, bolstering initiatives such as the Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE are blazing the trail to make education a\u00a0scalable\u00a0priority\u00a0for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This article originally appeared on\u00a0diamandis.com<\/a>. Read the\u00a0original article here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Image Credit:\u00a0Iulia Ghimisli<\/a>\u00a0\/\u00a0Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today, over 77 percent of Americans own a smartphone with access to the world\u2019s information and near-limitless learning resources. Yet nearly 36 million adults in the US are constrained by low literacy skills, excluding them from professional opportunities, prospects of upward mobility, and full engagement with their children\u2019s education. And beyond its direct impact, low literacy rates […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1477,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[36,37,38,39],"series":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articulos-ingles","tag-future-of-learning","tag-futuro-del-aprendizaje","tag-realidad-virtual","tag-virtual-reality"],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/singularityumexico.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/education-all-ages-future-learning-ai-vr-Peter-Diamandis-shutterstock-1229164693-1068x601-1.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/singularityumexico.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/11711533-1673157178559-89a95be153719-4-scaled.jpg","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/singularityumexico.com\/en\/feed\/podcast\/the-feedback-loop-by-singularity","embedCode":"Adult Literacy XPRIZE<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Exponential Tools: Training and Retooling a Dynamic Workforce<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Learn Anything, Anytime, at Any Age<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nHow Tech Will Let You Learn Anything, Anytime, at Any Age<\/a><\/blockquote>