Osmo leaps game gap to teach kids

A team of former employees from Google Inc. and Disney is looking to bring today’s digital youth back to markers, Play-Doh, and building blocks with a unique little device called the Osmo.

The contraption won’t be available on a commercial scale until the fall; however, pre-orders for the device surpassed $50,000 US in their first six-and-a-half hours.

Osmo is also winning over educators, who contend it could prove key to melding video games with everyday childhood learning.

The device is simply an iPad stand coupled with a tiny, snap-on mirrored hood. The mirror expands the field of vision for the iPad’s built-in camera, allowing it to monitor the tabletop in front of it.

That tabletop can be filled with puzzle pieces, game pieces or paper for drawing.

Using apps loaded on the iPad, Osmo then monitors and track show the players are assembling puzzles into shapes, spelling words with Scrabble-like pieces or using PlayDoh to make shapes — rewarding kids on screen when they’ve accomplished a task.

The idea is to bridge the world between video games and actual tabletop-based learning for kids aged six to 12.

“As people are flocking to virtual reality, we’re pioneering actual reality — unleashing experiences that go beyond digital screens,” says Pramod Sharma, chief executive and co-founder of Osmo. Sharma was a product manager at Google but left the company to pursue his vision for Osmo with a former colleague, Jerome Scholler.

The draw of Osmo was immediately apparent to Tanya Avrith, a former teacher, an educational technology consultant to Montreal’s Lester B. Pearson School Board, who brought back a few sample units from a conference.

The results, once the device was in the hands of students, were staggering, she said.

“You can’t get them away from it. They’re engaged. It’s really well designed. The students can’t wait to get their hands on it.”