Ed-tech Spotlight: Reading Adventure by Osmo from BYJU’S

Pranali Mansukhani, LTXD student, reviews an AI-powered tangible learning application designed to support early readers.

Osmo from BYJU’S offers a range of next-generation products that integrate tangible play with learning, using reflective AI technology. They are self-paced and engage the learner as an active participant in the learning process. With their target users being predominantly children from the ages 3-10, they use a “phygital” approach to bridge the physical and digital worlds—high-quality manipulatives such as letter and number tiles, tangram shapes, pointing devices, and “magic” blocks for logic are combined with digital story experiences where learners participate by accomplishing goals to help the characters in the stories.

What other fun “phygital” ed-tech products do you know?

Most of their products have been STEAM-focused, but recently they have diversified into reading and literacy, with their Reading Adventure kit.

How Osmo’s Tech Works

The tech comprises a reflector (mirror) that fits onto an iPad or Fire tablet’s camera and the computer vision algorithms that process the incoming data.

1. The reflector redirects the iPad’s front-facing camera towards the playing surface, which allows the iPad to see the entire surface in front of the Osmo stand.

2. A digital image of the playing surface is obtained.

3. The computer vision algo transforms the raw image into a collection of recognized objects.

4. The game engine integrates the objects recognized by computer vision into the game. This is how physical objects put in front of the screen become digitally connected game pieces in real time!

I think this opens up ways for so many fun games for children using tangibles to forward a story-based contextual learning goal through a constructivist, constructionist, and situative approach. Learners could complete tangible crossword puzzles or play scrabble to help protagonists gain access to those objects, experience thinking as a scientist by designing a new machine to achieve a goal using shapes, or use the logic “magic” blocks to solve community problems.

Osmo’s Reading Adventure focuses on developing literacy and improving reading fluency through real-time feedback offered using speech recognition. The target audience is kids from 5-7 years old.

Do you have a cool idea for other learning experiences you could use this tech for?

Osmo’s Reading Adventure. Source: playosmo.com

Features

iPad compatible
Physical books to read from at 3 reader levels: New Reader, Early Reader, Emergent Reader
An inbuilt diagnostic for reading-level assessment
An on-screen reading buddy that gives personalized real-time feedback using speech recognition
A tangible manipulative, a crystal wand, to interact with real-world books.
App loop: 4 new books added every month, on subscription

Reading Adventure’s Learn Journey

Narrative set-up: On-screen reading buddies, Oliver the dog and Nebula the star, guide the learner as they read by setting up the narrative context, giving the learner a purpose, and giving instructions on how to use the book and the manipulative.
Read-aloud: Learner reads aloud from the physical book and marks their progress on the app.
Practice: Learner plays interactive games for practice on phonics and comprehension, based on the book they read.
Feedback: Learner receives feedback from Oliver and Nebula to improve their fluency and pronunciation.

Oliver and Nebula seem relatable and friendly and a touch of delight to the experience. The product pieces look really cool and are of top-notch quality. However, the interactions with the app + book + wand seem a tad inconvenient. While Osmo usually does a brilliant job of integrating the tangibles with the digital experience, here, the interactions afforded by the combination of the book and the wand seem unintuitive at times. If I were a 6-year-old, I would probably just want to get to the end of the book quickly, and clicking on-screen after reading every sentence would annoy me.

With the delight factor really high, the product might do wonders for sustained reading and inculcating a reading habit—in fact, some learners may run out of content really soon, as it is very limited! The interactive games seem to be built well for developing comprehension skills too. However, when it comes to fluency and phonemic awareness, a more explicit approach through target vocabulary signaling might work better.

What Works: