How A New App Is Assisting Parents Fight The Pandemic Of Illiteracy

Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a decline in the academic performance of children. This decline has been so devastating that it made headlines in recent weeks including the fact that test scores in math and reading went down by over 2% last year. School closures and poor virtual learning forced parents to become educational tutors during the last 2 years. Apparently, parents not only needed to read bedtime stories but also teach large amounts of educational content to their children, while still swinging their part or full-time jobs. Serial entrepreneur and parent, Kyle Wallgren faced an additional challenge: he was in Texas and due to the travel restriction during the pandemic, he could not visit his children in Canada where they lived with their mother. When his daughter conveyed how much she missed him reading bedtime stories to her, the saddened father decided to find a solution. Together with a team, the 38-year-old parent developed an educational app called Edsoma (www.Edsoma.com), designed to provide easier means of learning to turn young kids into strong early readers.

“So it all started with me wanting to solve a problem for myself only to realize how many millions of people would benefit from Edsoma.” Kyle reflects. He also understands that many parents in the US are not excellent readers themselves and that his product benefits not just their children, but them as well.

So, he leverages on this situation by creating an app that can assist parents in teaching their children regardless of their educational background.  After some research, his team found out that 50% of Americans stopped at a grade 8 reading level and 54 million adult Americans can’t read properly. Kyle himself suffered from a reading disorder throughout his childhood that carried into his young adult life. With the birth of Edsoma, confidence is built, as learning can be carried out with assistance or independently by the child. Therefore, the goal of Edsoma is to engage in adult-to-child, child-to-child, and self-child learning processes.

Edsoma however provides the solution to difficulties encountered during reading. It guides early readers in their learning process by helping them identify and pronounce words appropriately. This is made possible with real-time voice recognition technology which teaches the right pronunciation of words. With so much accuracy, this app corrects a child who mispronounces a word by providing the right pronunciation of that word. This technology helps to know the capacity of a child. The app also tracks the reader’s improvement in real-time which makes it especially valuable for teachers.

Since many parents are disconnected from their children by geographical location, Edsoma provides a system to connect families. Parents who are divorced, separated, or out on a trip will no longer be deprived of quality reading time with their children. Kyle, who is a divorced parent, also made this known stating “Not just divorced parents can benefit from this app, other parents who have to travel for work and veterans get to spend time with their kids”. This not only improves reading culture but also creates bonding and lasting memories for both parents and children.

Expressing great confidence in the usefulness of the app, parents, teachers, and educators who attended the SXSW Convention in Austin, Texas poured out great reviews on the importance of the app and were eager to start the sign-up process. It’s therefore glaring that in a few years to come, Edsoma will be a household name to reckon with when it comes to the mentioning of great apps that enhance learning in early readers. Edsoma is set to fully go live and the app will also be a presenter at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair. Nevertheless, pre-subscription registrations have been readily available on the app and this have generated a wave of excitement among parents, teachers and most importantly children.