(Hong Kong, 16 July 2018) NetDragon Websoft Holdings Limited (“NetDragon” or “the Company”) (Hong Kong Stock Code: 777), a global leader in building internet communities, is excited to announce its subsidiary Edmodo’s new partnership with IBM Watson Education to create individualized tools for educators to address each student’s needs.
IBM Watson and Edmodo, the world’s largest learning network for K-12 students, teachers, administrators and parents, are collaborating to develop a personalized content recommendation engine that can be integrated within Edmodo’s existing social education platform. Teachers and students on Edmodo will receive personalized recommendations for learning resources by combining Watson Classroom’s Cognitive Library service and the millions of resources that have been shared by educators on Edmodo. Classes that have integrated Edmodo will be able to see recommended multimedia content that aligns to the grade level, age and subject matter interests of students. In addition, the team will be leveraging IBM Watson Tutor technology to create a new service that grants teachers on Edmodo the ability to select a package of topic-specific questions to assign to a student as either a learning activity or a natural language conversational assessment.
Learning gaps arise from the prevailing norm of one-size-fits-all approach among educators worldwide. On one hand, teachers already have a hard-enough job without being asked to personalize learning for each student’s individual needs. On the other hand, most students encounter gaps between what they are expected to learn and what they have actually learnt. Edmodo is continually building technology that
identifies resources that will help fill those gaps and deliver them to teachers and students in seamless ways. IBM Watson Education is focusing on developing technology that can identify these learning gaps in students across the world. The goal of this partnership is to reduce the number and size of those learning gaps.
Vibhu Mittal, CEO of Edmodo, commented, “With the right learning gaps identified, teachers finally have the starting point they need in order to address the individual needs of students in their classrooms. Rather than languishing over the “what”, they can move on to the “how” of personalizing learning, and with Edmodo’s recommended content system, we can help teachers find the right resources for each individual need.”
Chalapathy Neti, Vice President of IBM Watson Education, added, “AI has the potential to help close the learning gap and to equalize opportunity regardless of student-teacher ratio, school budget or lack of resources. All students benefit from an education that is tailored to their strengths and learning patterns. With Watson Education and our new collaborations, we are making strides toward creating a more personalized learning experience that is catered to each individual student. Together with our growing ecosystem of education partners, we look forward to cultivating an environment for life-long learners to grow, succeed and overcome challenges of all shapes and size.”
