Paras - this friggin awesome! As a 2x yc founder, who has chewed her share of glass trying to make something(s) people want, your bootstrapped story is inspiration for so many of us fellow founders. Congrats!
169 karma · joined October 2, 2014
These numbers have real impact. What the impact data I shared above will not show you is that our kids parents comment on the confidence their child develops after 2 months on the app. How they go from never raising their hand to speak in the weekly live to being eager to answer every question and be part of all discussions about the book in the weekly live meetup with their cohort in the app.
These numbers have real impact. Kids in the app are not rewarded with any use or monetary prize beyond their first tournament. Yet after the first month, reading levels do not drop and growth in phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary and comprehension still keep increasing (students have to do A LOT of work in the app beyond just reading. There is full reading courseware with quizzes, worksheets and mini lessons - our courseware is built on the Science Of Reading philosophy).
These numbers have real impact. Most of our parents could never get their children to take up reading. We don't just motivate kids with flashy use promotional tournament prizes. We turn movies into full n books and cartoons. All shot and filmed in our downtown Brooklyn studio. We have directors, producers, actors, recording artists and more - all to bring a book to life on screen. Children unlock episodes by doing the required daily reading and reading courseware. We are committed to making kids feel learning is fun. THAT is the intrinsic motivation we see as our duty to cultivate.
To reference The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (because why not), all of these concerns were part of the Primer's issues with Nell in the Diamond Age. Yet, when Miranda (via the Primer) realized Nell was not intrinsically motivated, they used tactics like bringing the subject matter to life enacted experiences or gamification like solving puzzles to motivate her. And in the end, it worked. She went from being a girl in extreme poverty with no interest in learning to becoming successful and the leader of her Phyle (tribe).
We are creating enabling environments to promote learning. It works. It is grounded in the neuroscience of motivation. As for the rest, I will let the philosophers philosophize.
Curious to hear your thoughts!
So, to answer your question there is actually a ton of research on the influence of gamification, reward mechanism and positive conditioning and their effects on learning outcomes. If podcasts are your thing, there is a wonderful Huberman Lab series on this too. I will link towards the end here.
Dopamine, the chemical which controls pleasure, learning and memory in the brain, can be used to hijack motivation and increase attention spans among learners – and when used correctly, it can even make your learning program/app addicting. Basically, what Litnerd does is leverage dopamine release (a big cash prize in this case creates shock and huge anticipation which acts as the initial hook/motivator) to get kids to want to signup and go through the monthly habit of our app and the reading activities.
After the first month, we do not see reading levels or activities in app go down. Even thought the cash reward incentive is gone. Students are still competing monthly and the chance to win more Litcoin (our points system in app) is what keeps them motivated afterwards. We hold competitions monthly and the reward is more Litcoin. For kids, however, an added motivator of our app is the weekly meetup. Kids want to be in the know with their peers each week at the meetup and this helps keep motivation for staying up to date with the daily reading and reading courseware.
Growing up in Karachi, my motivator to get good grades was to avoid getting beaten with a metal ruler. This was normal in my all girls school. Another motivator was that in highschool, our grades were posted in the local newspaper and it was considered dishonor to the family to not have A’s at least. This mechanism of negative reward system definitely plays into dopamine as well but research shows that positive conditioning leads to better long term learning outcomes than negative conditioning.
We have real data to show that in just 4 months, students improved comprehension scores by upwards of 70% and phonics by upwards of 40%. You can bet that i am eager to report back in a full year on how we compounded learning outcomes across Vocabulary, Phonics, Phonemic Awareness, Comprehension and Fluency.
All that to say, I feel you on tiger parenting. And that is why I am so bullish on what we are building and our positive dopamine connection by making learning fun and exciting via monthly tournaments (again, you only have a cash prize reward once. Every month thereafter, it is pure gamification without cash prizes).
Thanks again for sharing your thoughts. Would love to hear what you think?
- kids love any stories that involve witches and magical powers. I guess the Harry Potter phenomenon still reigns supreme.
- kids love Roblox and we learned A LOT about community engagement by incorporating these elements into Litnerd.
- kids are competitive!! The Leader Board is a huge incentive for kids to keep pushing on the app.
- kids prefer LitQuizzes over any other way of earning Litcoin. Something about immediate gratification compared to, for example, worksheets that are manually graded by our team so you don’t see the Litcoin tally for this until grading is done.
Having said that, we reward users with our own in app currency, Litcoin, after the first promotional usd prize. The reason it works is that after a month with us, kids value Litcoin and care for it more than the usd reward.
Past winners videos: https://www.litnerd.com/post/a-new-litnerd-reading-club-tour...
https://www.litnerd.com/post/litnerd-reading-club-tournament...
As our budget grows, we hope to cast celebrity actors in our films as well ;)
Litnerd turns classroom learning into an immersive and entertaining experience. We bring books to life by turning them into short TV episode series, streamed directly into the classroom each week during the school year.
There are 37M elementary school students across America and 42% of 4th grade students are reading at a 1st or 2nd grade proficiency level. The #1 reason students aren’t reading? They say it’s boring. We change that by bringing books to life. Think of your favorite book turned into a tv-show style episode-by-episode reenactment, coupled with a complete curriculum and lesson plans. Our team consists of writers, illustrators, educators, teachers, engineers, directors, cinematographers, music producers, choreographers, animators and actors.
Litnerd is a contracted vendor with New York City Department of Education. Over 14,000 K-5 students have streamed Litnerd in their classroom. 79% of students said Litnerd is their favorite way to learn! As one of our students said: “I loved this program. It helped me see the magic in books.“
See our Launch HN here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28300640
We are hiring for: 3D Design Engineer (Unreal, Unity, other 3D Animation) We’re looking for Unreal Animators and Designers to help craft cinematic stages, as well as props and effects, for our episodic series. We need self-starters who can create their own interactive worlds from storyboard to final product, as well as adapt work from pre-existing illustrations.
If you’re interested, please reach out to us at jobs@litnerd.com with your portfolio and any relevant examples of your work.
—--------- Senior Software Engineer (Typescript, React, Node.JS) Full-Stack Engineer (Typescript, React, Node.JS) Software Engineering Intern (Typescript, React, Node.JS) Product Designer We’re looking for Software Engineers who love typescript and are comfortable working in both front-end (browser) and back-end (node) environments. We run a modern, fully-typed stack using technologies like Typescript, React, Node.js, Postgres, Redis, and GraphQL. We embrace software design best practices like functional programming and domain-driven design, taking code quality and web standards seriously.
If you’re interested, please reach out to us via our Work at a Startup page: https://www.workatastartup.com/companies/litnerd
I like how you approach this though!
I do see us growing up into a Byju-style global company in the future. Or, at least, those are our aspirations and ambitions at Litnerd! But first... we are committed to improving learning outcomes locally for our kids who need it most.
I definitely love the idea of gamification, the only thing I would add as feedback we have noted from parents is that Epic and AR would push kids to read 'fast' books within the Lexile range they had to stay in, rather than books that might be more interesting to them. The tests also weren't the greatest to measure comprehension because of their format. Having said that, I definitely love the idea of gamification inspired vey AR and we intend on having some of that in our program too!
I'm still grinning that you know and used AR! So cool.
If what I paraphrased above truly is your position, we will have to respectfully agree to disagree. Tons of research shows that the brain synapses grow stronger through active participation in the arts/story-telling/theatre. These essential activities at an early age can actually create new neural pathways and fortify those that are already present.
But again, I want to be careful to not miss your point because if you took the time to clarify, I want to make sure I beneifit from your feedback and sound like I'm ignoring it.