Berkeley Start-upsSpecial Apps Make Learning Child’s Play
by Tamra Teig
Sooinn and Gunho Lee are award-winning video game designers who spent most of their professional lives working on massively popular multiplayer online games. But when their son was born in 2009 with special needs, they decided to turn their talents to designing play-based learning tools that help children learn independently.
CEO Sooinn remembers beginning from the bedside of their newborn son and never looking back. “We decided to take the plunge and build a sustainable company of our own in 2012, with the focus on supporting families with children with special needs.”
Guiding Principles: Independence and Inclusion
LocoMotive Labs’ goal is to foster independence and inclusion—concepts inspired by their own children, as well as the speech and language pathologists, special education teachers, and occupational therapists who facilitate their children’s learning. The company consults with these educators during the entire design, development and testing process, to ensure they address learning differences, and offer accessible games and apps that empower the 6.5 million children in the US with special needs.*
Special Product Features
Todo, which means “all” in Spanish, conveys LocoMotive Labs’ goal of inclusion for all children with learning differences. Features make the games playable for kids with working memory, visual processing issues, or language delays. The technology allows young children to write their answers on the screen, “tap and drag” alternative for children who find writing difficult. They even have customizable settings features for left-handed and dyslexic students.
- Todo Math offers 18 multi-level games, and over 40 math missions to build Pre-K through 2nd grade math skills, including counting, writing numbers, addition and subtraction.
- Todo Telling Time – chosen Best Design Winner at the 2013 Launch Education Conference. Levels go from simple to fairly advanced (“how much time has passed?” Days of the week and months of the year are also covered
- Kid in Story Book Maker – kids can create personalized stories with LocoLens™ Photo Editing
- Todo Number Matrix builds math skills such as categorization, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and fractions, as well as visual discrimination and spatial orientation, skills that are important in all subjects.
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*Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). Digest of Education Statistics, 2012 (NCES 2014-015
Note: Co-founder, President & Chief Engineer Gunho Lee earned his Ph.D in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on cloud computing and big data. Co-founder and Creative Lead Sooinn Lee produced three award-winning learning and assistive iPad applications for children with special needs, and has presented about the benefits of technology for children with special needs at various education conferences.
