BALANCED CTO Talks Future of Education on Wall Street Journal Live Stream
On January 25, BALANCED CTO Dr. Corey Clark joined The Wall Street Journal as a speaker in the sponsored session of the “Future of Education” live stream event, “Breaking Barriers: Solutions for America’s Literacy Crisis,” to discuss future-focused initiatives and collaboration required to improve literacy.
Dr. Clark was part of a panel of literacy advocates and innovators, including British A. Robinson, CEO of the Barbara Bush Foundation, and Denine Torr, VP of Corporate Social Responsibility & Philanthropy at Dollar General and Executive Director of Dollar General Literacy Foundation. Together, they talked about the scope of America’s literacy crisis – 43 million U.S. adults reading below a 3rd-grade reading level, and how educational technologies like games, VR and AI can help empower our communities.
The panel mentioned Codex: Lost Words of Atlantis, which was developed under the leadership of Dr. Clark as part of a collaboration between SMU Guildhall, SMU Simmons, and Literacy Instruction for Texas (LIFT). Codex is a puzzle game that won the XPrize for Adult Literacy for achieving the best increase for English language learners among all competitors. The development of the app and the data gathered through this process is only the first step that will allow us to start building machine learning techniques to personalize learning experiences for adult learners, accounting for diverse backgrounds and knowledge gaps.
“Gamification plays a great role. We know that gaming is engaging – it is a massive industry, larger than most other entertainment industries combined. So with that, we know that gaming is actually educational. So we need to take the work we have on this first pass and develop a fully developed game around adult literacy curriculum, that utilizes the deep knowledge tracing and the personalized learning experiences.”
Dr. Corey Clark – BALANCED CTO