Could a smartphone teach literacy?

There are $10 to $30 Android phones at Walmart, with specifications that are nearly comparable to the original iPhone.

Pretend that someone made the perfect smartphone app that could start with a 3 or 4 year old kid with no access to a teacher at all, and the app eventually teaches them to be fully literate.

What would the app look like? What would it do? What curriculum would be the best, even if it's expensive today? What would be the next best, but it's free?

I'm guessing it would need to speak. I think it would probably need to have very accurate speech to text capabilities. It would also need handwriting recognition, I think.

Something like 20% of the adult world is illiterate. What would it take to make an app that would be a good enough teacher, that it wouldn't totally suck?

Submitted December 07, 2016 at 02:58PM by VikingCoder http://ift.tt/2gW8XdW