In the vast majority of families, homework, and particularly revision, is a source of tension. This was the case for Pierre-Alexis Voisin and his partner Antoine Pointillart, as well as for their relatives and friends when they began to ask them.
So, they came up with the idea to create Baobab, to allow children to revise in a fun, motivating, and effective way through an app, while ensuring that parents can stay informed without having to act as the enforcers of revision.
“The tone we wanted to give to Baobab is one that alleviates guilt. We are all parents, we all go through the same thing, we are all in the same boat, so we are certainly not here to judge,” emphasizes Pierre-Alexis Voisin.
Specifically, the app starts with the child's lesson, which they will photograph, even if it consists of handwritten notes or scribbles. This lesson will then be analyzed by the app, which will extract the key elements to remember and create a personalized, fun, and motivating learning path, starting with small revision cards to help learn in bite-sized pieces rather than facing the entire lesson at once.
Next, there will be a sort of warm-up for content acquisition, in the form of multiple-choice questions and simple exercises like fill-in-the-blanks or, for foreign languages, matching pairs of words in both languages.
Finally, we arrive at open-ended questions that require some writing to answer, which is closer to what the teacher will ask on exam day.
All of this can be done independently by the child. “The motivation comes from the gamification we have incorporated into the app,” explains Pierre-Alexis Voisin. “A child who works earns small coins that can be exchanged for collectible cards and avatars.”
“But there is also this motivation that comes from the child’s sense of having learned well, being able to do it alone, and feeling proud of themselves. And that creates motivation for the next revision.”
Baobab has also partnered with the Content Square Foundation to offer additional options for children with dyslexia, providing reading assistance features that allow for spacing of characters and lines, highlighting syllables, and choosing an appropriate font.
This assistance ultimately proves useful for all children. “We have children who sometimes, when they are tired, activate the reading assistance mode and then turn it off when they feel a bit better, a bit fresher. So it goes much further than just for children with dyslexia. It’s actually for everyone,” concludes Pierre-Alexis Voisin.
