We live in a world where children are born with tablets and smartphones integrated into their daily lives from a very early age. The way that youngsters interact with technology has completely evolved to the point that a 3 year old can work their way around a tablet more easily than their parents. Take the example of One Laptop Per Child in Ethiopia where kids hacked tablet PC’s with zero instruction in 5 months as a starting point. Children at a very young age have incredible intuition however their extraordinary ability to adapt to new technologies shouldn’t overshadow the fact that the devices should be used to strengthen the cognitive development of these children and not to play Hungry Hippos all day long.
The founders of Infantium, Karen Márquez (CEO) and Dani González (CTO) have created a revolutionary adaptive learning platform to cultivate the cognitive development of children from 0 to 6 years though individualized online learning content (apps, ebooks and games). Karen tells us the advantage of focusing on this age group is the uniform development goals of worldwide education systems, “it’s very scalable as within this age group all of the educational systems have the same cognitive development objectives, something that doesn’t apply to other age groups”.
Infantium sets itself apart from the competition by using artificial intelligence, Big Data and cognitive technology to increase the learning process of the children and hence offer relevant and personalized leaning systems. The product has been developed and tested together with expert PhD’s in pedagogy and Artificial Intelligence from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and Microsoft (bizspark) whom together have created a unique learning experience based on the specific strengths and weaknesses of each child. “Through our powerful cloud-based data analytics system and intelligent algorithms, the platform responds in real time to each child’s needs, adapting and providing the most relevant content to enhance their learning”.
Following the child’s online learning activities, the parents or teachers can access a performance report analyzing different indicators to assess the child’s evolution. Additionally the platform encourages the parents to actively participate in the cognitive development of the children through complimentary offline programs and activities. Karen affirms that the offline experience and personal contact from parents and teachers is essential in helping complete the full cycle learning process.
Infantium launches on Windows and iOS in the next few months and will be using a “Freemium” model with some free apps for download and extra features and apps at a cost. They have already closed some very exciting agreements with the University of London and Diana Laudrillard, a profesor and expert on learning with Digital Technologies, so watch this space!
Infantium were one of the winners of the 7th SeedRocket Campus in 2012 where they closed an initial seed round of €130K, led by renowned angel investors such as Grupo ITNet, Carlos Blanco, Oscar Fuente, David Tomás and Sergio Balcells, amongst others. They were also the winner of Wayra Global Call in 2013 amongst 3.444 projects worldwide and more than 350 applicants in Barcelona.
As Infantium was “born as a global company”, their goal is to get the hell out of dodge and expand their business across Europe, Asia and Latin America. They are currently raising a round of €250K from international investors to allow them to grow their team and drive expansion.
“Infantium can watch a child’s every move and collect thousands of data points per child per day” says Karen. Children go at their own pace, and the platform continuously adapts to challenge them based on their individual learning style. They analyze the performance of each child, and similar children on the platform, to serve up the best activity at a particular moment in time. “We are going to build the world’s smartest tutor for children, personalizing learning, a valuable repository of the ways kids learn”.
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