Twin Science & Robotics is launching a new online school that will bring all children with an internet connection Ivy League-quality coding and artificial intelligence education. To celebrate, they are giving out 10,000 subscriptions to their coding classes and sending out 1,000 STEM kits to educators attending their launch event. They are also giving a Twin School scholarship to a child coming from disadvantaged echelons of society for every new subscription, hence the name ‘twin’.
“Our school’s full name is Twin School: Tech4Good,” says Asude Altintas Guray, CEO and Co-founder. “We don’t just want to teach children the know-how, we want to impart humanitarian values to them, too. To this day, we have had over 500,000 children use our STEM kits and STEM apps or attend our STEM workshops, and we have seen them use their know-how to invent earthquake detectors, reforestation robots, or ocean cleaning ships. To make sure not just a select few but all children have access to the skills and the mindset to actualize their dreams, we have come up with Twin School where all children have access to quality education at their fingertips.”
Twin is an extraordinary organization which has recently won World Economic Forum’s Smart Toy AI Awards, Bett 2020 Awards, the Play for Change Awards, and was featured on BBC. Their employees consist of award-winning researchers in the areas of AI and education, which is why they build their products after extensive R&D processes. Twin School was shaped upon one such process which led to the simple but crucial realization that our current education system is failing to prepare children for the future.
World Economic Forum’s 2020 report “Jobs of Tomorrow” shows that the roles with the highest rate of growth within high-volume jobs include Artificial Intelligence Specialists, Data Scientists, and Full Stack Engineers. There is a rising demand for certain skill sets, yet children from disadvantaged areas do not have access to these skills. Twin School makes sure all children have access to both core skills (like Leadership, Communication, Negotiation, Creativity and Problem-Solving) and disruptive tech (i.e., Data Science, Natural Language Processing, Automation, Robotics, Cloud Computing and Cybersecurity) skills by bringing role model tutors together with children through gamified lessons and live sessions. Children can ask their questions to the tutors during “office hours,” socialize with their peers on Twin app in a safe and moderated environment or try their hand at one of the hundreds of DIY projects and share their projects on the app: Twin offers an online campus environment that makes learning fun again.
“Our tutors and educational experts are graduates from institutions like Brown University and University of Pennsylvania, and our programs are prepared under the guidance of University College London academics. We have designed the perfect online campus experience for children aged 8 to 11 where they can socialize with each other over shared interests, compete in fun games of trivia, attend live shows with tech role models, upload and watch STEM experiments, and so much more. This is high quality education that used to be reserved for only the students of the most expensive of educational institutions. Today, we make it accessible for all,” says Chief Content Officer and co-founder Cemil Cihan Ozalevli, who is one of the MIT Under 35 Innovators of the Year.
There are three packages of Twin School: Starter, Premium, and Premium Plus. The (free) Starter pack includes access to all the basics for a fun time on Twin app, like the DIY project library and the trivia hub. The Premium pack includes access to weekly coding & AI classes as well as office hours with tutors, monthly insight reports outlining the child’s progress, and fun STEM adventures in addition to Starter features. The Premium Plus pack is a hybrid pack including all the Premium features, and in addition, a STEM kit (Coding Kit, Autonomous Vehicle Kit, and so much more) is sent to the child’s home every two months.
“The idea for a virtual launch event dates to when Prof Dr Ger Graus OBE, our strategic advisor, suggested we host an event to talk about how the heart and the mind should come together for true scientific progress. We have been wanting to host ‘The Heart of Science Talks’ for a long time, and we could not think of any occasion that is more fitting than the launch of Twin School: Tech4Good to begin these talks. Therefore, this will not be an ordinary event, but a coming together of esteemed educators to discuss ways in which we can transform education for good,” says CGO and co-founder Omer Gorgulu. “The fact that any educator who attends the event and joins in the conversation is gifted a STEM kit and 10 Premium subscriptions is in line with our quest to make tech for all, tech for good.”
To sign up for the event, educators and education enthusiasts are urged to visit www.twinscience.com/launch.
