bNosy — helping kids master science and technology through edutainment
”Helping kids master science and technology through edutainment” is the tagline for the Swedish company bNosy which, among other things, offers fiction books, apps and videos. Karolina Kjellberg, founder with a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics, is convinced that collaboration between children, teachers and parents is the receipt of success.
This is the final article in our August theme, “Guiding and inspiring the next generation of science & tech people”.
No Swedish midsommar celebration is complete without fun books about science.
Parents rushed past me into the assembly hall as I was sitting on a wooden bench, ready with my camera in one hand and a cafe latte in the other. While the little ones walked into the hall one could only smile. Right in front of me stood a brilliant sun accompanied by smiley water drops and giggling clouds. The music started and when these four-year-olds opened their mouths, out came a song filled with words such as evaporation, precipitation and condensation. We were all impressed about their ability to explain the water cycle with such advanced wording. They were living proof of how easily children can learn complex things, as long as it is presented in a form that appeals to them.
I am a scientist and a parent who loves science and technology. I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry and those years were filled with interesting challenges and exciting new areas to explore. Not a day goes by without me thinking of all great inventions that simplify our lives. Three years ago I got fed up watching and reading news about science teacher shortage and declining science results among children in Sweden. I strongly felt I wanted to contribute and help to make a change. My job in the pharmaceutical industry was far away from the educational industry. However, one thing that I learnt while doing my Ph.D. was that no problem is too great to solve. Hence, I started a new business, bNosy, where the aim was to make more children passionate about science and technology.
Together with an engineer and an illustrator friend I am running bNosy where we are working towards bridging the gap between school and after school activities. Our way of doing that is to make edutainment that supports the science and technology curriculum. We are bringing entertainment from home into schools and including the science and technology from school in after school activities. We want to take advantage of the natural curiosity that children have and expose them to science and technology early in live, which is why we focus on 4-7 year old children. Since different children learn in different ways we are trying to reach out through different media. Therefore we do, in addition to the storybooks, have activity books, game app, music and videos.
We hope that our products in the Pi and the Power Pals series will enable teachers, parents and children to work closer together, because we strongly believe that such collaboration is a receipt of success.
Karolina, Anna and Pauline from bNosy
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!