On October 16, SK Telecom announced that it signed a Collaboration Agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to jointly launch a pilot project in Costa Rica to enhance children’s learning capacity in mathematics.
The agreement signing ceremony took place at IDB headquarters located in Washington D.C.
* The Inter-American Development Bank (IADB or IDB or BID) is the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. Established in 1959, the IDB supports Latin Ameri-can and Caribbean economic development, social development and regional integration by lend-ing to governments and government agencies.
The Bank is owned by 48 sovereign states, which are its shareholders and members. Republic of Korea joined the Bank in 2005 as a non-regional/non-borrowing member.
Under the agreement, SK Telecom will provide Albert, its smartphone-powered education robot, to be utilized in 300 preschool classrooms to make learning more effective and interesting for children. The company will also provide technical expertise and capacity building in the use of education technologies.
This project has been launched as part of the IDB’s efforts to improve mathematics and science skills of children in Latin America and Caribbean. Here, smart learning robot is being highlighted as a means to help enhance critical thinking and problem solving skills for children including preschoolers through interactive display and fun learning contents and activities.
“At the IDB, we believe in the power of innovation to address the most pressing development challenges. By bringing this cutting-edge technology to Costa Rica’s early math space, SK Telecom is helping us to inspire an early passion for education in Latin America and the Caribbean’s (LAC) children,” said Bernardo Guillamon, Manager of the IDB’s Office of Outreach and Partnerships.
“SK Telecom will take this as an opportunity to improve the educational environment for not just the Cost Rican children, but also children around the world,” said Park Chol-soon, Senior Vice President and Head of Convergence Business Office of SK Telecom. “We will continue to make efforts to create a more effective learning environment through expanded provision of smart robots and active development of smart robot-based interactive learning contents.”
Meanwhile, since launching Albert in December 2012, SK Telecom has exported the smart robot to many countries around the globe, including China, Taiwan, Spain and France. Also, utilizing the smart robot, in 2014, the company has developed ‘Smart Robot Coding School,’ which is a training program designed to allow children to learn how to develop software in a fun and easy way, and operated the program in Taiwan, Malaysia, Spain, France and the United Arab Emirates. In April 2015, SK Telecom entered the Latin American Market by supplying Albert and Smart Robot Coding School to Sercomtel, the largest telecommunications company in Paraná, Brazil.
