Two Teams
Tie for Grand Prize in $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE
XPRIZE:
2.07.2019
XPRIZE, in
partnership with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy and the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, today announced two grand prize winners of the Adult
Literacy XPRIZE, a multi-year, multi-phase competition focused on transforming the lives of low-literacy adults across the
nation.
Launched
on former first lady Barbara Bush’s 90th birthday in 2015, the $7M Barbara Bush Foundation Adult
Literacy XPRIZE presented by the Dollar General Literacy
Foundation challenges teams to develop mobile applications for
smartphones that increase literacy skills
among participating adult learners. With research showing that 77 percent of
Americans now own a smartphone, the competition aims to dramatically
change the way the United States meets the needs of the 36 million adults with
low literacy skills, by tackling the largest obstacles to achieving basic
literacy – access, retention and scale.
Grand
prize winners, Learning Upgrade and People ForWords, will
divide a $3 million purse,
while each also receiving a $1 million achievement
prize, for having the best performance in two key demographic groups:
native English speakers and English language learners.
 |
Learning Upgrade (San Diego,
California) – Led by Vinod Lobo, the team helps students learn English and math
“the fun way” through songs, video, games and rewards. The app is
available on both Android and
 |
People ForWords (Dallas, Texas) – Led
by Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human
Development, in collaboration with SMU’s Guildhall and Literacy Instruction for
Texas, the People ForWords
team has developed “Codex: Lost Words of
Atlantis,” a mobile game based on an archeological adventure storyline to
help adult learners improve their English reading skills. The app is
currently available on Android devices
at no cost.
The
second phase of the initiative is the upcoming $1 million Barbara
Bush Foundation Adult Literacy XPRIZE Communities Competition, a 15-month
competition for organizations,
communities and individuals to recruit adult learners to download and use the
apps developed by the two grand prize-winning teams along with the
following two finalist teams:
 |
AmritaCREATE, Amrita University
(Amritapuri, Kerala, India) – Inspired by Amrita University’s Chancellor AMMA
and led by Dr. Prema Nedungadi, this team of educators and developers
has created a personalized learning app along with engaging, culturally
appropriate e-content linked to life skills. The app is currently available
on Android and iOS devices
iOS devices at no cost.
 |
Cell-Ed (Oakland, California) – Led by Dr.
Jessica Rothenberg-Aalami, this team brings more than 20 years of EdTech
experience with low income, low-literate adults in the U.S. and worldwide by
offering on-demand essential skills, micro-lessons and personalized coaching on
any mobile device, without internet. READ
MORE >>
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