Play n Learn Tech by Daisy Tech Limited uses integrated AI to help create personalised pathways, by intuitively planning lessons for each student based on needs and performance.
Chinelo’s story
Chinelo Okafor is a Performance Engineer from Nigeria who founded her own tech company, Daisy Tech, after a significant experience at her previous job. Chinelo describes how a colleague, who had been at the company longer than her and was the primary income earner in her family, was at risk of losing her job because she didn’t have digital skills. Chinelo was asked to teach her colleague how to use Microsoft Excel.
Recognising this digital generation gap and potential risk to careers and livelihoods for those without basic digital skills, Chinelo turned her attention to the next generation and decided it was imperative that they learn digital literacy at a younger age, which led to the development of the Play n Learn Tech web app.
The innovation
After hosting physical and online events in partnership with secondary schools, Chinelo observed children’s natural inclination toward games during their free time, so the Daisy Tech team decided to create a gamified way of teaching digital skills and soft skills to secondary school children, making education more engaging and accessible.
Play n Learn Tech is a web app, accessible through computer systems in secondary schools, aimed at teaching secondary school students’ digital skills including data literacy, computer literacy and coding (such as Python programming). The web app also teaches entrepreneurship skills and soft skills that are applicable within the corporate environment, recognising that it is not just digital skills that create career opportunities.
Because not all children progress at the same pace, based on their backgrounds and existing experience of digital technology, the Play n Learn Tech app has an AI element built in to monitor the user’s progress and customises the different paths the children can take. The web app also feeds into a dashboard for teachers, so they can monitor students’ progress.
A key aim for Chinelo is to ensure the programme is accessible to underserved communities, to reap the benefits of increased career opportunities, which is why the programme has initially been developed as a web app that can be accessed using equipment most government schools will already own.
Making a difference
Although still in early development as Chinelo and her team continue to add new lessons to the platform, they believe the Play n Learn Tech app will teach invaluable skills that young people need in their arsenal – including project-based skills.
By 2030, Africa will require 230 million digitally skilled workers, with Nigeria alone accounting for 57 million of these jobs. Daisy Tech aims to equip its graduates with the necessary skills to thrive in this evolving job market and secure these opportunities.
We know that children love to play so we thought this is how the app should work to encourage them to learn digital skills by playing digital learning games. By 2030, Africa will have 230 million jobs requiring digital literacy, with 57 million of them in Nigeria alone.
