A few months ago I came across the Global Learning XPRIZE challenge to develop open source software to teach basic reading, writing, and arithmetic without a teacher, and I thought, “what a great challenge!” I’m often disappointed by how technology is perceived to do more harm than good. There are far more magical devices in the world now than there are magical teachers. Let’s put them to good use! Here’s one idea:

With the advent of computer vision and augmented reality interfaces, there are new opportunities for innovation in education technology. I think that technology sometimes gets that bad rap due to the medium du jour—the glowing screen that is so easy to disappear behind!

But soon enough we will see the end of the glass rectangles and enter a new era of pervasive computing. This will change our relationship to technology, particularly in the classroom. Computing will happen everywhere, and it won’t be something we hold in our hands.

What do I mean by pervasive computing? Well, one example is machine-learning-powered software that gives spelling lessons while watching you play with an alphabet letter set. I developed a proof-of-concept called Alphabot. Alphabot is released under the GPL and is free, open-source software, and you can find it on my Github.

The program has a few modes: it can prompt you to find individual letters one by one, it can prompt you to spell words from a corpus (currently Dr. Seuss’s One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish), or you can spell your own words and it will read them. Watch the video—skip to 1:10 for the interesting bits: