Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Your weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist people with disabilities and special needs.
——————————
If you have an AT question, leave us a voice mail at: 317-721-7124 or email tech@eastersealscrossroads.org
Check out our web site: http://www.eastersealstech.com
Follow us on Twitter: @INDATAproject
Like us on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/INDATA
Hi, this is Bill Allen and I’m the founder and CEO of Magical I am.
Sunil Thankamushy:
Hi, this Sunil Thankamushy and I’m the principal of game director for Magical I Am.
Bill Allen:
And this is your Assistive Technology Update.
Josh Anderson:
Hello, welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 517 of Assistive Technology Update, it’s scheduled to be released on April 23rd, 2021. On today’s show. We’re super excited to have Bill Allen and Sunil Thankamushy on and they’re going to talk all about Magical I Am, a new mobile game that’ll be coming out, that’s made to help individuals with dyslexia and other print disabilities learn abstract words. What are abstract words you might ask? Well, you just have to keep on listening to find out. We’ve put links to more information on Magical I Am, as well as a link to their GoFundMe page down in the show notes, so make sure to check those out.
Josh Anderson:
We also have a story about Microsoft buying Nuance, the makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Please don’t forget if you ever have a question, somebody that’ll make a great guest, or any other information you’d like to share with us, we always love to hear from you. You can call us on our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Drop us a line on Twitter @INDATAproject, or send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org. We thank you so much for listening and now let’s go ahead and get on with it.
Josh Anderson:
I’ll start today’s show the story from Microsoft and it’s titled, Microsoft Accelerates Industry Cloud Strategy For Healthcare With The Acquisition Of Nuance. So folks in the assistive technology world probably know Nuance as the makers of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is the premier voice to text software, but it also allows individuals to control the entire computer using nothing but their voice. While some manufacturers, Apple, Microsoft, and others are building some of these features into their computers, Dragon has always been the gold standard. It’s always been the one that seems to work the best and seems to allow individuals with mobility challenges to really completely control the computer using nothing but their voice and some different voice commands.
Josh Anderson:
Now, the story itself which we’ll put a link to down in the show notes, focuses more on Nuance’s forays into the medical field, so their cloud and AI software that is used to help healthcare and enterprise with AI experience. Microsoft is actually absorbing and taking over Nuance as it becomes just part of Microsoft’s cloud for healthcare. While this in and of itself is not exactly assistive technology, this could bring changes to Dragon NaturallySpeaking in the future. It’s not mentioned anywhere in this story, but considering that that’s one of the things that Nuance does, one of the products that they offer and one of the things that they do make, Microsoft would be requiring that as well. Came out in the news earlier this year, or maybe late last year, that Nuance was raising the price of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, and changing the way that it does everything.
Josh Anderson:
A lot of their services were going more subscription and I’m sure that maybe that’s part of this acquisition, because I believe that was more for businesses, for enterprises and larger scale, whereas their standalone Dragon NaturallySpeaking software didn’t really change much, but did jump in price, making it a little bit harder to acquire for individuals with disabilities that could really benefit from the software. It’s hard to tell where this will all go in the future as far as how it relates to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. But of course, all of us in the AT world definitely hope that maybe Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the technology and the amazing things it can do with controlling a whole computer, could maybe be built into the Windows operating system sometime in the future. Microsoft does have voice commands. Microsoft does have dictation built into a lot of their O365 software offerings, but it’s just not quite as user-friendly and not quite as useful as Dragon is to individuals with disabilities.
Josh Anderson:
So we’ll keep an eye on this, but I’m sure there might be some changes here sometime in the future, but definitely all of us in the accessibility and assistive technology world hope this ends up to be an amazing partnership that perhaps some of these features that Dragon NaturallySpeaking use to help individuals with disabilities can now maybe be built in and available to all. Again, we’ll put a link to this down in our show notes and keep an eye on it, to see where maybe this goes in the future.
Josh Anderson:
Dyslexia and reading difficulties affect many individuals, some never even get a diagnosis and may just be labeled as slow learners or kids who don’t pay enough attention. There are different interventions that can help, but today I’m very excited to talk about a new way of addressing these challenges through gaming. Our guests today are Bill Allen and Sunil Thankamushy and they’re here to tell us all about the new game they’re working on called Magical I Am and how it can help address these issues in a new and enjoyable way. Bill, Sunil, welcome to the show.
Sunil Thankamushy:
Thank you.
Bill Allen:
Thank you.
Josh Anderson:
Well guys, I’m really excited to talk about this technology before we get into it. Could you guys tell me a little bit about yourselves and your backgrounds?
Bill Allen:
Sure, I’ll go first. This is Bill. I am 67 and I’m 67 years of dyslexia. I have been at this for the last 25 years and Magical I Am is a true breakthrough in the sense that we’re using technologies that have never been used before. The cost effectiveness of this program is such that we’ve made it where the parent cannot afford not to try this opportunity to correct their child’s reading and eventually their writing issues with dyslexia.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent and Sunil, what about you?
Sunil Thankamushy:
Yes, I’ve been in the games industry for close to 20, 20 plus years and I made a lot of games that most of you have heard of, Medal Of Honor franchise, Call Of Duty. I’ve been working on the Call Of Duty franchise, especially the beginnings of it, and many other games that are basically about fighting and shooting and exploring. About 10 years ago, I had a revelation in my own life, where I realized that I need to be focusing on games and products that are about improving the lives of the players in some way, hopefully in some kinds of a way.
Sunil Thankamushy:
A couple of years before, Bill Allen came to me with this interesting proposition that why not make a game that changes the lives of dyslexic children. There was a great opportunity there I thought, to use some very interesting technologies that that are yet to be built, but use it in a way that makes children be more aware of certain problematic words that, like what Bill would say, are abstract words. So from that point on, we’ve been building this wonderful game, which is about turning abstract words into fun game experiences. So, well, that’s my introduction.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent and you already started getting into a little bit there, but what is Magical I Am?
Sunil Thankamushy:
Magical I am is a role-playing game where children in the age group first grade to fourth grade, in that range, they would explore a wonderful world which is called Sky Village. It’s this magical village perched up among the clouds for them to explore. There are some very interesting, quirky and fun characters to engage with. Lots of interesting locations, full of mystery and magic to figure out, explore, lots of puzzles to solve lots of people to meet, all the game characters, of course, and in the process, get exposed to the lore of that world. While doing all that engagement, the child gets exposed to about 300 abstract words. These are the words, that if you really learn how to recognize that is what it looks like, what it sounds like and what it means, then reading becomes effortless. So this experience is a delivery mechanism to make these 300 abstract words fun and accessible to children, thereby making reading effortless.
Josh Anderson:
Is that’s awesome. No, there’s some different kind of technology in here so can you tell me about, I believe it’s Bindu M.E. Tech and adaptive content casting. What is that?
Bill Allen:
The Bindu is a technology, for the first time the parent and the educator will actually know how and why a child will perceive a symbol different than it is. In other words, a lower case V, they’ll know why the child is seeing it as a D, or a P, or a Q. It’s a metaphysical point about three to five inches above the midline of the head and we’re using the technologies of pitch, roll and yaw within the smartphones and tablets. Sunil, you want to take it from there?
Sunil Thankamushy:
Yes, so to expand upon what Bill said, what we’re basically doing is turning that metaphysical point as he put it and make it an actual game play mechanic. So children would actually be able to see their own Bindu point above their heads using augmented reality and all the gyroscopes and accelerometers of the mobile device. With that basic mechanism, we are making the children, or allowing the children, to visualize these abstract words, these 300 abstract words, that we were talking about in a way that has not been experienced before.
Sunil Thankamushy:
So words become characters, words become something to tangle with and untangle, and recognize, and own in a way that makes it fun and engaging. So Bindu M.E Tech is the technology to make that happen for a child, one abstract word at a time.
Bill Allen:
Josh, when Sunil says own, the terminology is mastery because once you master something, you have it for life. That’s the whole damn goal with the abstract words and symbols and the using your mind’s eye so that you perceive them accurately and then master what those words look like, sound like and mean. Once you have that, you’re good to go.
Bill Allen:
For the parent, there needs to take place in this order to correct the reading issue associated with dyslexia. Number one, you have to learn and begin to master the location and save the Bindu. Number two, you have to master the uppercase and lowercase alphabet. Number three, you have to master punctuation and then you start to master these approximately 200, 300 words. Within the first 20 words, the parent can expect their child to jump at least one grade level in reading. Some will go faster than others. I mean, give you an example of, I’ve seen a first grader jumped to fourth grade in one week.
Josh Anderson:
Wow.
Bill Allen:
So the results can be phenomenal. Also I’ve seen one child, he’s now in the movie business, took him almost a year before the reading disability symptoms disappeared, but he’s there now and he’s doing great.
Sunil Thankamushy:
So the thing about games is that it has to be delivered slightly differently for different gamers, for all gamers, to enjoy it equally. Different games to do it in different, subtle ways but what we are doing is that we are providing the game play in a way that is graded to the reading level of the child. So our game, Magical I Am Sky Village is designed to appeal to children from the first to fourth grade but the game also understands that not all children, have got trouble with all 300 abstract words and symbols.
Sunil Thankamushy:
So what the game does, is using our own proprietary technologies, we provide the game to the child in a sequential manner by measuring their reading abilities so that they bypass the easier words, and then they are challenged with the more complex, abstract words and symbols and we call that system adaptive content casting. So the game is going to be equally fun and engaging and challenging to all different children, while still delivering different sets of these abstract words and symbols at different rates based on how the child is consuming the content. What’s beautiful is that in that process, we are also measuring how they are doing in real time. That data is what we use to show their improvement or time, which is something that parents obviously will be able to be very excited to know about.
Josh Anderson:
Oh, definitely. Parents will be very, very excited to know about that. So just for our listeners and really for myself as well, can you give me an example of what some abstract words are just so we can, well I guess, make them less abstract. I guess that’s not the right wording, but-
Bill Allen:
No, that’s perfect. What you’ll find in K through three, over 50% of the text is abstract words and symbols, words like a, and, the, was, is, there, most, when, where, how. All the itty bitty words that educators take for granted and think that you should just learn them by sight. Since you see T-H-E, you should have the meaning associated with the T-H-E and read it accurately every time. But if you don’t have either one of the three parts of the word, what it looks like, in this case, T-H-E, what the word sounds like, the or the, and if you don’t have a meaning for it, what will happen is inconsistently, the child will exude a reading disability symptom of a stumble, a hesitate, an inserted word, omitted word, replaced word, skip word, skip line, skip lines, go blank, daydream.
Bill Allen:
In other words, these reading disability symptoms are interrupters. If anybody’s done any public speaking and you get interrupted four times in the first 90 seconds of your talk, what happens is you begin to get frustrated or angry. If you ask the dyslexic, or the way the dyslexic characterizes reading and writing, number one is frustration. Number two is anger.
Sunil Thankamushy:
So Joshua, I just want to add to that, what Bill has discovered and is bringing to the world is the idea that this whole reading disability, especially when it comes to dyslexia is linked to these abstract words, that is isolating the problem to this abstract words. So everyone takes that for granted, these words, because you cannot build … For me, it was very hard to believe that words like a, an, the, and such words are actually problematic, but then the more I thought about it and have been engaging with the team and with Bill it became clear that yes, there was something funny about these words, because when you put the word T-H-E in front of you, there is no particular picture that comes to your mind, but if you put a word of C-A-T in front of you, immediately a cat pops into your mind. So these words, and there are like 300 of them, seem to be these stumbling blocks that are very, very benign looking words for most people, but really troublesome for the reader.
Bill Allen:
Right. One of the things that’s critical, Josh, is that the reason why educators have not zeroed in and figured out that this to be the problem, by the way, there’s numerous names for these abstract words, Dolch words, sight words, trigger words, [inaudible 00:18:15] words, but the problem with these abstract words and symbols, and a symbol will be a comma, a period, a question mark, is that the reading disability symptoms are inconsistent. Sometimes one day the child will read the, every time in the hour that they’re working with their parent or their teacher and they say, “Ah-ha, he’s got it.” Then the next day the will be the word A or the word one, or it’ll be skipped all together, or just a stumble. So because of its inconsistency, that is why we have built Magical I Am, so that the child will have what it looks like, sounds like it and means, for all of these small words that you have to have by the time you graduate from third grade.
Bill Allen:
The reason why I say you have to have it by the end of third grade is fourth grade is the watershed year. You go from learning to read and then in the fourth grade to reading to learn, and statistically, if you are not able to proceed to reading to learn in the fourth grade, the statistics are overwhelming that that child is going to be a burden to society in some way, shape or form.
Josh Anderson:
As we get into the game play and everything, I know that this was kind of made for 3D learners, is that correct?
Bill Allen:
Well, it’s made for anyone that is dyslexic. When you say 3D learners, the reason why we use the word 3D learners is because when the dyslexic gets confused or when the 3D learner gets confused, what they do is they opt in to using their senses to figure things out. In other words, sight, touch, sound, taste, and smell. Well, there is no sight, touch, sound, taste, or smell with the word the. Our primary target is the dyslexic and a dyslexic parents, because for less than $200, they will be able to correct the reading and eventually the writing disability associated with your child’s dyslexia.
Bill Allen:
Now, if you look at dyslexia programs and dyslexia schools, you’re looking at thousands. For schools, the average tuition is about $25,000 and they want a three-year commitment, but our audience is actually bigger than the dyslexic, about 40% of this country, and just about with all the romance languages, I think you could put them in there, you have a category of people that can read but don’t like to read. The reason why that they don’t like to read is when they’re reading to themselves, it’s almost subliminal, they’re being interrupted, not as much as the dyslexic, but they’re reading interrupted. When you get interrupted, you don’t like to continue the task unless you’re passionate about it and want to push through it. So our audience is about two thirds, 60% to 66% of the students in K through five and eventually weeks … Well not eventually, I would say within less than a year’s time, we will have Magical I Am in a number of school districts in this country.
Josh Anderson:
Very nice. I can see how that can help just tons of people, and not only that, also give them something where they maybe don’t realize they’re learning, which is always very important.
Bill Allen:
Well, that’s the beauty of what Sunil has created, is that to progress in the games, you have to take 30 to 45 seconds and master these abstract words, and it’s all entertainment. He’s just done a masterful job with it.
Josh Anderson:
Well guys, what phase of development are you currently in for Magical I am?
Sunil Thankamushy:
We in the alpha phase, which means we are actually currently testing to small select audiences in the United States and worldwide, Israel, and building up from there. So, at this point, several hundred kids have already played the game and we are in the process of releasing it strategically to larger groups.
Bill Allen:
Sunil, you want to talk about GEM?
Sunil Thankamushy:
Yeah. So one of the grayer silver linings of COVID is that it inspired something very fascinating. Thing is, with COVID raging all through 2020, we were faced with a problem, like how in the world do we test our game with children when we can’t be in the vicinity of houses with children, or just simply in a socially distant situation. So how do we do that? So what we ended up doing was to create a piece of technology that lets you view in real time the progression of the player through the game, hundreds of thousands of players at the same time. So we have a dashboard in which we can view the progression.
Sunil Thankamushy:
So obviously, no personal data is transmitted or sent, it’s just where the players are, what maps they are in, what activities they’re doing, how many points have they gained, did they read the text there? How many abstract words have they encountered in the last one hour? How many abstract words are giving them trouble? Did they uncover that abstract word placed behind that tree, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera? So we are calling this system, GEM, gameplay evaluation method. So, it’s a beautiful piece of technology that is allowing us to improve the game while people are playing it.
Josh Anderson:
Do you have a planned release date to the masses?
Bill Allen:
Way I would like to answer that is tentatively, we’ve got it set for July.
Josh Anderson:
Well guys, whenever this does come out, what devices is it going to be available on?
Sunil Thankamushy:
It’s going to be available on Android and Apple devices, so mobile phones and tablets.
Josh Anderson:
Excellent, and if our listeners want to find out more about Magical I Am, what’s the best way for them to do that?
Bill Allen:
Please go to magicaliam.com. It is a plethora of information for the dyslexic parent and anyone that is interested in literacy. The Magical I Am team has put in millions of dollars into this project. Because of Sunil’s genius, instead of it being $50 million, we spent a little over $3 million. However, for us to make public release in July or sooner, we are short about $150,000. And we’ve set up a GoFundMe campaign and whether it’s $5, or $50, or just $1, just please make a contribution. You can do that by going to the Magical I Am website and you’ll see a Go Fund Me link front and center.
Josh Anderson:
All right, we will put a link to that down in the show notes. Guys, I can’t thank you enough for coming on today and just talking about this great technology that can really help a lot of people in and as we said, not just help them, but help them without them even really knowing they’re being helped.
Bill Allen:
Thank you very much.
Josh Anderson:
Thank you very much. Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on Assistive Technology Update? If you do, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Shoot us a note on Twitter @INDATAproject, or check us out on Facebook. Are you looking for a transcript or show notes? Head on over to our website a www.eastersealstech.com. Assistive Technology Update is a proud member of the Accessibility Channel. For more shows like this plus so much more, head over to accessibilitychannel.com. The views expressed by our guests are not necessarily that of this host or the INDATA Project. This has been your Assistive Technology Update, I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in Indianapolis, Indiana. Thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time.