SBIR Phase I: Audio Encyclopedia for Children: Supplementary Science Education Tool

This SBIR Phase I project will develop an audio encyclopedia for children, which is simultaneously entertaining and educational. Each episode will explore one science topic in comprehensive detail with the content presented in a dialogue form. The audio format offers parents two important advantages over video: it is much less expensive, and it reduces already excessive children's screen exposure. An innovative dialogue education approach will be adapted for audio edutainment purposes and optimized through extensive testing. The audio encyclopedia will be sold through apps and marketed through mobile and social media. Each episode will be produced in accordance with highest standards in kids' entertainment, including professional script writing, acting, sound design and music. Such audio program will target a need for supplementary education in science and math, and its implementation will improve a fundamental base of scientific knowledge in young listeners, and boost their interest in research and discovery. The educational methodology of this project is based on innovative adaptation of principles of dialogue education to child learners. Generally, dialogue learning requires the student to have enough life experience to be able to converse with the teacher as an equal on a variety of subjects and to be able to relate new information to his or her present knowledge. In order to allow young children to experience benefits of such method, this project will simulate the process of dialogue learning with fictional characters of a student and a teacher. The goal of Phase I research is to establish feasibility of adaptation of the dialogue education method to the needs of children. In order to test knowledge absorption, encyclopedia episodes will run on the mobile application that will include knowledge evaluation functionality. The pilot episode will contain various ways of content structuring, dialogue style and sound design in order to test effectiveness of different approaches for the mastering of predefined learning objectives. The result of Phase I research will be development of screenwriting guidelines, creation of database structure for feedback data collection and evaluation of preliminary testing results of the educational method.