Keep It Simple (KIS) technology is an innovative software application aimed at digitizing and strengthening the education system in middle- and low-income countries for dramatically increased educational outcomes for millions of children.  Its back-end system stores data on millions of children and has the capacity for data analytics that helps track of both individualized and comparative learner performance. The software replaces the traditional chalk and talk approaches to teaching and learning processes and removes the dreaded exam stigma through continuous learner-based performance measurements. It is a powerful learning innovation based on sound psychological principals that build confidence and self-esteem in children by enabling them to learn at their own speed while setting them up to succeed at their lessons. Its multi-dimensional design allows teachers to identify student strengths and weaknesses and to focus on child-centered needs based on the extensive data that is stored in the system on each learner. The KIS software provides technology innovation training for teachers, parents, and caregivers. It reduces the amount of human, time, financial, and capital resources required to supervise the teaching workforce since its centralized data enables education executives and managers to track teacher presence and performance remotely – including real-time data on if the teacher is in the classroom and how s/he is performing at any given time.

Compared to USA, the software will be rolled out in Africa at a discounted rate of over 96%. Its audio system enables self-learning for all children, particularly those whose parents are illiterate. The software can be used by both typical and children with special needs and therefore eliminates disability as a discrimination factor in the educational and learning processes. This is particularly critical to the severely impaired children in Africa who are routinely excluded from the mainstream education system. In its current form, the software is suitable for children aged 2.5 to 5.5 years attending early childhood development centers, pre-primary classes, and grades 1-2 of primary education. It provides children with opportunities to start early, learn through technology innovations, and thrive through the country’s mainstream education system. Because of the design and ability to maintain individualized data, it has the capacity to identify special needs in children. This includes identification of learning and sensory disabilities such as dyslexia and color blindness in early years. Additionally, it provides teaching and learning diagnostics by storing individualized and measurable data on each child and teacher and thus enabling education managers to track and strengthen the overall learning and teaching approaches and outcomes.

In contrast to the traditional educational methods that utilize cohort-focused evaluation of children based on a uniform curriculum and collective teaching and assessment methods, the software tracks and maintains data on each child’s learning speed and brain activity. This data is remotely available to teachers and education administrators and it does not require their presence at the child’s specific location. It also tracks teacher performance, particularly the quality of teacher-student interactions to the day and time. It therefore enables correlations to be drawn between the individual child’s performance and all the influencing drivers and factors such as teacher interactions, intrinsic and external influencers in the different times of the day, and other environmental or school factors. It also enables teachers to track each child’s performance by lessons, subject, or unique area of concentration. It provides detailed and prompt examination of performance, including words and speed in both verbal and written language acquisition.

Overall, the software provides 360-degree analytics on performance and learning dynamics and environment, including break periods in the learning process.  It quantifies efforts, time, and outcomes and demonstrates an integrated co-relation between individual child learning, environment, and dynamics. Its solution-based learning approach in which the learner’s difficulty is adjusted in tandem with their demonstrated growing learning capacity creates an inherent learner-centered reward system that acts as learning incentives for the individual child without the actual use of external rewards. This is particularly the case because the software tracks response vis-à-vis correct answers and difficulty rates.  Each learning area is broken into multiple levels of difficulty and adjusted in accordance of the growing capacity and confidence of the individual child. The software utilizes the major ways of learning, including visual, audio, and tactile senses that enables each child to gravitate towards their current preferred learning style and thereby increases engagement. This technology bridges the gap and can actually help with school, Centre, and home based implementations of education especially during the time of Covid-19 with its associated concerns. Once Covid-19 concerns are mitigated, the same technology can still be used to continue the students’ education. We also have the capacity to adapt this technology to cover higher primary and secondary levels of education and to address all major subjects delivered by the core national curriculum in the public education system in Sub-Saharan Africa – see examples below:

A trial of the software in Africa:  https://kispublishing.com/africa/

Teaching a 15-month-old:  https://kispublishing.com/teaching-infants/

A special needs classroom in the USA:   https://kispublishing.com/special-class/