Osmo Genius Kit

6–9

education

multi

playosmo.com

Osmo’s Genius Kit empowers children to digitally and physically learn art, math, and science skills. The kit includes five different games - Words, Tangram, Newton, Masterpiece, and Numbers - that allow children to engage in hands-on activities and games on their iPad. In Newton, for example, children construct physical objects into mazes that guide balls on the screen into targeted zones.

Each Genius Kit game has 60 levels and is designed to foster creativity, imagination, and social interaction.

Location

Website

Twitter

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Awards

Palo Alto

playosmo.com

@PlayOsmo

Osmo

Time's Best Inventions 2014

Q&A

How Osmo is Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Stimulate Children’s Imaginations

An excerpt from our conversation with Osmo Co-founder and CEO Pramod Sharma

When WIRED covered Osmo they highlighted how your team is bringing mixed reality to the education world. What is your philosophy around mixed reality? Why is it so important to your team?

Mixed reality captures Osmo well: how we’re using the power of the digital and physical worlds and mixing them together to create a new category of experiences. Inherently, the concept of mixed is bigger than digital or physical alone. For learning applications, I think mixed reality has a very strong promise in the richness of experiences you can build. If you can do a better job sensing the real world, you can design much deeper experiences. As an example, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day you open a book and Osmo is looking at it and reading to you. There are experiences where digital can augment your physical world in a really powerful way. As the technology improves, whether it’s advanced computer vision, hardware, or A.I., things will get more and more natural. When things get more natural there is no friction between you and what you want to do. With less friction and more power, things become more engaging.

How do you think A.I. can help us accelerate children’s development and learning?

Similar to any other technology, A.I. will enable experiences that were previously hard to imagine. If I were to think about it right now, I see two tracks for AI. One is around building a new experience for you. You couldn’t have used your hand to draw with an iPad in the past. Now, thanks to advancements in computer vision and A.I, you can. Additionally, machines are learning more about us the more we use them. That’s very powerful in telling you what you can do next. For example, a platform can tell you: ‘You’ve done these three activities. In order to grow over time, you need to focus on this area.’ I wouldn’t be surprised if one day you can tell kids what careers they should pick or what types of things they can do based on the products they use in Osmo Land. That will come from understanding things and putting them together. A.I. is the underlying technology that can enable that.