Technology, innovation, disruption, failure: yes, they’re Silicon Valley buzzwords, verging on cliché. And the truth is that when it comes to complex and difficult social issues like education, health, and the environment, failure isn’t an option, and innovation and disruption can do more harm than good. But when the right technology innovates and disrupts in a thoughtful way, miracles can happen. The Tech Awards, a program of The Tech Museum of Innovation in San José, celebrates these miracles every year.
Microsoft has sponsored the Education category of the Tech Awards since 2004. Past Education Laureates include truly transformational organizations like Khan Academy, Benetech, and DonorsChoose. Microsoft is thrilled to support this year’s laureates and share the story of their work. We are lucky enough to feature BeeLine our on blog. Check out their post below.
– Jessica Weare, Philanthropy and Civic Engagement Manager
STEM is all the rage these days—even President Obama is on the bandwagon, tweeting that science is “what makes America great.” There is no doubt that STEM is important, but remember: you can’t spell STEM if you can’t read.
Literacy remains a serious problem in America—44 million adults cannot read above the 4th grade level (and therefore can’t even read this blog post), and fully half of all adults cannot read above the 8th grade level. How can we expect high school or college students to make their way through Biology and Chemistry textbooks when so many of them are still reading at a junior high level?
BeeLine Reader, a Silicon Valley-based literacy startup, has developed a technology that improves reading ability for the vast majority of readers, and is particularly helpful for students who struggle with reading. Microsoft, in partnership with The Tech Museum of Innovation, recently awarded BeeLine Reader a $50,000 prize for their innovations in education technology. BeeLine Reader’s literacy tools will help students read and learn in many subjects, including but not limited to STEM.
BeeLine Reader’s innovation is deceptively simple: instead of displaying text in monochrome, BeeLine Reader uses a color gradient that wraps from the end of one line to the beginning of the next. This color gradient makes reading more cognitively efficient by reducing the difficulty of line tracking and transitioning. It dramatically improves reading ability for many readers with dyslexia, visual impairments, and attention deficits—eliciting exclamations like: “All of a sudden my dyslexia is gone,” “It reminds me of the first time I tried glasses,” and “This is the first time I have ever read a paragraph uninterrupted.”
BeeLine Reader also accelerates the rate at which young children learn to read. Research shows that 1st grade students using BeeLine Reader increase their reading fluency by over 50% in just one month, and students using BeeLine Reader outperformed their peers by 175%.
But BeeLine Reader isn’t just a tool for helping kids learn to read—its technology is helpful for the vast majority of readers, many of whom increase their reading speed by 20% or more. BeeLine Reader is used by Ivy League professors, Wall Street analysts, and corporate lawyers—in other words, people who read for a living.
BeeLine Reader is using this split demographic to power its buy-1-give-5 program, which benefits students in low-income schools. We’re launching this program in East Palo Alto and will be expanding to other locations around the world.
Want to help out? Try out the BeeLine Browser Plugin, which you can download for free. If you like it, upgrade to the Honey Bee plan, which is just $2.50 a month. Your purchase will provide literacy tools to five students in need. Don’t need BeeLine, but still want to help? PayPal donations are also gladly accepted!
You can also check out BeeLine’s PDF Plugin and mobile app, which works with Kindle books and many popular news apps. Questions? Email [email protected].
###
Nick Lum is the CEO and cofounder of BeeLine Reader. He studied Economics and Linguistics at Swarthmore College and Corporate Taxation at UCLA School of Law. After working as a Silicon Valley attorney for 7 years, he left the law to build BeeLine Reader. He lives on the Peninsula with his better half, Professor Kathryn Gin Lum, and their baby daughter.
