News and Announcements
Ai-Media Is Changing The Global Classroom With Its Ai-Live Speech-To-Text Platform
- Published July 26, 2013 5:50PM UTC
- Publisher Wholesale Investor
- Categories Company Updates
Children who are deaf or hard of hearing face many obstacles when passing through the Australian education system. As schools devote costly, specialized resources to help teachers, students still face a continual, uphill struggle to keep up with their friends in literacy and learning.
However, the results of a pilot scheme conducted across NSW and Victorian schools challenges this paradigm. Ai-Media, an established company that made its name providing closed captioning to Foxtel channels, has pioneered Ai-Live, a real time, speech-to-text platform that equalizes the classroom environment for students who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Across NSW and Victoria, schools trialled the Ai-Live platform and over 30 students experienced immediate benefits. “In one school, a 14 year old girl who had struggled with conventional teaching approaches went from bottom of the class to leading her class in ten weeks,” explained Tony Abrahams, CEO of Ai-Media, recounting the positive real life result of his company’s efforts. “The use of audio/visual aids in learning has been proven to improve knowledge acquisition and retention from 20% to 80% and this is evident in the subjects of the pilot test”.
The effectiveness of Ai-Live was evident to teachers as they used it first hand. “As well as providing access for the students, the transcripts were a great resource for the teachers. Ai-Live provided a mirror to their delivery allowing them to self-assess their performance, refine their style and provide improved outcomes for students,” said Mr Abrahams.
The success of the main pilot conducted over 18 months across a number of schools facilitated by the Victorian Deaf Education Institute, a part of the Victorian Government’s education department, has led to the service being expanded in Victoria, and New South Wales.
The positive outcomes that Ai-Live deliver have worldwide potential reinforced by Ai-Media’s distribution agreement secured with Microlink, UK’s largest independent supplier of assistive technology solutions for the disability sector. “This is another significant milestone for the company. Together with our $2M Commercialisation Australia grant, these results validate the company’s $13M investment in the technology to date”.
The company’s capital raising, as featured on Wholesale Investor, will fund the UK expansion ensuring Ai-Media’s unique solution can soon help students and teachers worldwide.