Bookbot

We're looking for a PhD candidate for an exciting project at the intersection of cognitive science 🧠, mental health ❤️ and AI EdTech 📚 🤖! Based at the Flinders University Institute for Mental Health and Wellbeing, you will be supervised by myself and Prof Gen McArthur from Australian Catholic University + The Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation (DSF) and work closely with Industry Mentor and Partner Adrian DeWitts, Founder of Bookbot.com The position offers a fully-funded scholarship (3.5 years), co-funded by Flinders University and Bookbot.com, with leave entitlements and industry training. We're looking for a candidate who is ready to commence before September this year. There's some flexibility in project scope and study location. The project will likely involve some co-design around how AI tools can be leveraged to provide socioemotional support to children with reading difficulty, and to evaluate a new model of reading ability, engagement, self-concept and emotional health. This project would be suitable for any student with a background in #Psychology, #CognitiveScience #Education, #DataScience, #PublicHealth or #ComputerScience. We could tailor the focus of the PhD to anyone with strengths in just one of these areas! We are seeking Domestic Candidates in the first instance, but will seek approval for suitable International Candidates. Learn more here 👉 https://lnkd.in/gn_UExy3 Please share and reach out if interested!

At Bookbot, we’ve had a huge year for optimising how our digital library can pique the interest of our existing readers as well as those that we are yet to reach. It is extremely important to us that we are at the head of the pack with regards to technological, educational and creative approaches that will make a tangible difference in the journeys of our readers. Our hard work has paid off, not only with the expansion of our community but through recognition via multiple awards. We would like to take a moment to be proud of our achievements and grateful to the institutions that selected us from lists of very worthy competitors. The first award that we would like to discuss is the Mom’s Choice Awards for 2024 to 2025, which places a focus on excellence in media, products and services that are family friendly. This esteemed award has a lot of reach, and we are so excited to be welcoming more families to our library as a result of this opportunity. Next up is not one but two awards from the Parents’ Picks Awards for 2025, where we placed in both The Best Products for Elementary Kids and The Best Education Products in the World categories. These awards have a focus on elements like social and emotional development, exposure to diverse learning experiences, and products that are able to not only educate but do so in a fun and engaging manner. Our placing in these two awards is likely to provide benefits all year as parents head to the site in search of ways to try new approaches with their child’s reading routines. The next award that we would like to highlight is the Educational Tools Awards, where we placed in the track for preparing students for life in the 21st Century. The Tools Competition awards prizes to companies that are innovators in the edtech space, and we look forward to collaborations and connections that will come from exposure through this competition. Finally, Bookbot was awarded with a badge of excellence on the Educational App Store, which will boost not only the traffic that is coming through to our app but also the confidence that potential subscribers are going to have in our product. The Educational App Store is written by teachers and educators, incorporating independent app assessment and ensuring that apps on the platform are the best possible options in what can be an overwhelming market. A sincere thank you to all of the institutions that have recognised what Bookbot can do for young readers over the last twelve months, and we look forward to sharing further successes with you soon.

We're hosting two panels at the CIES - Comparative & International Education Society Conference in Chicago on Monday! And we're also inviting those interested in voice AI to join us for an informal catch up after the voice AI panel. Leveraging Voice AI to assess early grade reading skills and support learning 🗓 Monday 24th March 2025 - 9:45 to 11:00am 📌 Palmer House, Floor: 3rd Floor, Salon 6 Chair: Clio Dintilhac, Gates Foundation Discussant: Cally Ardington, University of Cape Town Presenters: Romana Kropilova, AI-for-Education.org Luke Crowley, Trackosaurus Adrian DeWitts, Bookbot Manjari Sheel, Wadhwani Institute of AI Full programme here: https://lnkd.in/ety6GPsA Join us afterwards (from 11:15-12) for an informal chat on voice AI - if you'd like to join please sign up here: https://lnkd.in/eKS8zBZb Curating Educational Content 🗓 Monday 24th March 2025 - 2:45 to 4:00pm 📌 Palmer House, Floor: 7th Floor, LaSalle 3 Chair: Dr Asyia K., Gates Foundation Discussant: Christine H. Beggs, Alternatives in Development Presenters Romana Kropilova, AI-for-Education.org Alasdair Mackintosh, AI-for-Education.org Jamie Alexandre, Learning Equality John Roberts, Oak National Academy Full programme here: https://lnkd.in/eaNpAEBg #CIES2025 #AIforEducation #AIinEducation Fab Inc Team4Tech

We talk about evidence A LOT!! Without it, how do you know something works and is worth doing? And is providing real benefits rather than using up time that could be better spent? Evidence for EdTech is complex - an app starts with an idea and testing that idea requires a different process (rapid evaluations) to testing a fully developed product before implementation at scale (RCTs). And AI EdTech is complex - the AI component requires a different set of tests to the pedagogy design. We're launching our Evidence Clinics with four partner organisations - EIDU, Nyansapo AI, Bookbot and Center for Integrated Solutions. We'll be working together to refine and co-design their logic models, better articulate their goals and manage evidence generation activities. And we share everything we do with our community! We'll produce a guidance document to help developers ensure they’re scaling in an evidence informed way. You can find our quality assurance framework for AI EdTech here: https://lnkd.in/dmzT8J8C To see how LLMs (and SLMs) perform against our pedagogy benchmark, check our leaderboard here and use the filters to find the best models at your price point: https://lnkd.in/dzQTkWym AI-for-Education.org is a platform for educators, policymakers and developers. It contains guidance, tools, resources and code to help guide the development of AI EdTech for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). #AIforEducation #AIinEducation Fab Inc Team4Tech