11 Feb
Tackling the literacy crisis during the pandemic
You don’t have to be an educator or a parent to be concerned by recent headlines about learning loss in children, like this one from the Washington Post. Reports about the effects of remote learning on kids confirm two things: the pandemic has deepened the decades-old literacy crisis, and students of color and in high-poverty […]
23 Nov
Forbes: SoapBox Labs Gives Voice To The Obstacles, Opportunities Of Remote Learning
Thanks to Michael Horn for a really enjoyable interview published today in Forbes. A great conversation that covers a lot of ground including the difference between voice technology and voice assistants, the importance of accuracy of voice technology for kids, and how voice technology has become core to EdTech, a need that has been amplified […]
30 Sep
Our Partnership with Microsoft
In March 2019, SoapBox Labs and Microsoft became partners in tackling the global literacy crisis. Earlier this month, Niamh Bushnell sat down with COO Dr. Martyn Farrows and Dr. Kevin Marshall from Microsoft Education to talk about our work to date and the important role voice technology plays in supporting literacy for kids. Q: Why […]
25 Aug
Amplify Goes Live with SoapBox Fluency
BROOKLYN, New York—August 25, 2020—Amplify, a publisher of next-generation curriculum and assessment programs, today announced the release of a voice-enabled reading assessment for grades 1–6, created in collaboration with Dublin-based SoapBox Labs, which develops accuracy and privacy driven voice technology for children. Text Reading Online is the first literacy assessment of its kind to enable […]
24 Aug
About SoapBox Fluency
For a customer-facing view of how SoapBox Fluency powers reading assessments for kids, check out Amplify’s Text Reading Online tool, launched today. For an under-the-hood view of how SoapBox Fluency works, and why it’s a game changer for educators, this 3 minute demo by our Director of Speech Technology, Dr. Amelia Kelly, explains all: Dr. […]
21 Aug
Bias in Education
Fantastic article by our friend and collaborator Yaacov Petscher and his esteemed colleague Nicole Patton Terry, on the dangers of bias in education and the potential for AI to address it. “As AI-enabled technologies like speech recognition systems become more and more prevalent in everyday life, biases like these are not just annoying — they’re […]
17 Jul
Built for Kids. Magic for Parents.
It’s been a busy few months for the team here at SoapBox Labs. Our latest newsletter shares all of the details, from new products and team members, to a digest of recent media coverage. The newsletter talks about how voice technology comes into its own at times like these. Why? Because it offers kids an […]
30 Jun
The Future of Education Technology is Interactive
We’ve all been learning a lot about what doesn’t work in distance learning for kids recently. One of the big takeaways seems to be the importance of self paced learning. Another is how much more effective learning is for kids when it’s interactive. “Teachers want to engage kids with interactive experiences” as CEO of edtech […]
24 Jun
Equity in Voice Technology
Equitable voice technology should be a non-negotiable yet, according to Stanford University’s FairSpeech project, all 5 of the leading speech recognition tools “misunderstood Black speakers twice as often as white speakers”. SoapBox Labs’ partners at the FCRR have also shared their concerns about technology and issues of equity in this recent Smart Brief article. Dr. […]
09 Jun
Change is needed. Learning to read can change a child’s life.
CEO Dr. Patricia Scanlon commented on an article this week entitled “How ‘Reading Instruction’ Oppresses Black and Brown Children”. Writing in Forbes, Natalie Wexler gave an ominous assessment of the huge inequalities in US schools with regard to reading: ‘On national tests last year, only 18 percent of black 4th-graders scored proficient or above in […]
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