Imagine will demonstrate that children, with personalized technology in their hands, can become literate and numerate with little to no adult instruction. More than 250 million children and youth worldwide do not have access to school. And hundreds of millions more go to school but never learn to read or write.
We are partnering with organizations across the globe to pilot autonomous learning programs. We will build an evidence base and identify what works – and why. We will use data to continuously improve the content, approach, and implementation. Then we will provide tools, expertise, capital, and a network to enhance our ability to scale elsewhere.
Enabling out-of-school children to learn through technology will dramatically increase access to education, free up resources, and create a high quality, cost-effective model that can scale globally. Similar to skipping the step of laying landlines and going directly to cellular, let's consider leap frogging the cost and time to build schools and go directly to autonomous learning. We will always count on adults, including teachers, to provide support, training and mentoring.
We envision a world where all children have access to opportunity. Proving the effectiveness of autonomous learning, beginning in places with no alternatives, can pave the way for limitless possibilities for all children.