Pioneering Personalized Learning: How TinyTap's Yogev Shelly Revolutionizes Childhood Education

In our dynamic series "Behind the Startup," we bring you an exclusive conversation with Yogev Shelly, the brainchild behind TinyTap. Beginning his journey with a heartfelt personal mission to aid his ailing father through interactive tools, Yogev pioneered a transformation in early-childhood education. Today, TinyTap stands as a colossal library of educational games crafted for young learners, empowering educators with a unique platform for content creation.

Ishan Pandey: Hi Yogev, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind TinyTap?

Yogev Shelly: My name is Yogev Shelly, I’m the founder and CEO of TinyTap, we have been around for more than ten years catering to the early-childhood education arena. TinyTap is the world’s largest library of educational games for young learners and has a creation tool where educators can create their own material with no coding necessary.  I built the platform originally as a way to communicate with my ailing father. He suffered from dementia, so I designed an interactive slideshow tool to exercise his memory with pictures of familiar faces and a recording of my voice walking him through who he was being presented to him.

The platform was discovered by teachers and therapists who immediately started using it as an in-class teaching material, with the popularity of smart screens in schools it became practical to use TinyTap to help their students connect with the lesson, in the classroom, and at home. This ignited the idea that personalized learning is something families are looking for and we took it a step further by introducing a subscription service where creators can earn from the educational content they make and families can get access to teacher-made content.

Ishan Pandey: Please tell us a little bit about TinyTap and its core offerings within the blockchain ecosystem.

 Yogev Shelly: TinyTap has always been focused on offering the creators on our platform fair value for their contributions. The current plan has every subscriber who interacts with their game denotes higher earnings for the creator that month. With the adoption of blockchain, we began offering Co-Publishing rights to web3 natives via Publisher NFTs, a new use case of our own creation. Now, an educator can create a game or a course on TinyTap, sell Co-Publishing rights, and then continue to enjoy earnings from their organic audience as well as higher numbers based on the marketing efforts of their new co-publisher.

Ishan Pandey: Can you please elaborate on PublisherNFTs and how it enables educators to monetize their academic work?

Yogev Shelly: Educators are invited to create educational content on TinyTap in the form of games and courses. A game is a presentation experience with interactive slides for the student to become engaged in the learning process rather than passively watching a screen.

The PNFTs will connect creators with a much wider audience and allow them to focus on creating educational material rather than having to worry about how they will sell it.

Ishan Pandey: What benefits do content creators and educators gain from tokenizing their educational content as NFTs? What measures will be taken to ensure the authenticity and quality of educational content offered as NFTs on the marketplace?

Yogev Shelly: On Top of the PNFTs, educators will benefit from direct and transparent revenue streams through on-chain transactions. As a part of Open Campus, a decentralized mission for education and web3 protocol, we seek to implement peer review into the minting of educational content as NFTs, to ensure accurate information is being shared.

Ishan Pandey: How can the integration of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in education promote creativity, ownership, and collaboration among students and educators?

Yogev Shelly: Educators can benefit from owning their course materials, lesson plans, or educational resources, as demonstrated with Publisher NFTs. This ensures that their work is rightfully attributed and earns revenue transparently. The additional earnings from co-publishers can inspire educators to devote more energy to developing exceptional and creative teaching materials. The Co-Publishers are really where collaboration is highlighted the most. A teacher’s content may not perform well in a region with cultural or language barriers, but a native who purchases the rights to share the content can step in to localize the material to better fit the market.

NFTs can play a big role in the recognition of outstanding academic performance if they were distributed by schools and institutions. Students who achieve exceptional grades or excel in specific subjects could be awarded unique NFTs, acknowledging their achievements publicly which they would then be able to use later in life when seeking higher education or positions within the workforce.

Ishan Pandey: Please elaborate on the advantages of decentralizing education and utilization of Publisher NFTs.

Yogev Shelly: With too many regulators and government control, education is becoming a politicized tool that is losing sight of preparing children for the future. You can see it from books being banned, and curriculums being removed from schools, more and more people are seeking alternative access to education. A decentralized education system allows learners to seek out the best providers of knowledge and with co-publishers, the opportunity for the teachers to be discovered is more likely.

Ishan Pandey: What is the role of digital identity management in the Web3-enabled education ecosystem, and how does it address concerns about privacy and data ownership?

Yogev Shelly: DIDs (Digital Identities) play an important role in education, particularly in the context of blockchain technology. For learners, DIDs make credentials and achievements portable and self-sovereign, enabling them to carry verified records with them across different platforms. Institutions and employers can access a transparent audit trail due to the tamper-proof and immutable nature of on-chain credentials.

Traditional identity management systems often collect vast amounts of personal data, raising concerns about potential breaches or misuse of this information. Web3-enabled digital identity solutions, on the other hand, adopt a privacy-first approach by leveraging novel technologies such as zero-knowledge proofs. Learners also have the ability to share specific attributes or credentials without revealing their entire identity.

Ishan Pandey: How does the shift towards Web3 affect traditional educational institutions and their business models?

Yogev Shelly: The field of education technology presents a significant opportunity to transform the global education system, which is in dire need of improvement. The more businesses that invest in and offer tools and resources to creators, educators, and families, the greater the positive impact on education will be.

Ishan Pandey: Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of education with the widespread adoption of Web3 technologies, and what advice would you give to stakeholders preparing for this transformation?

Yogev Shelly: We will determine the worth of educational content by the knowledge and value it provides which will encourage others to pursue deeper understanding and for the providers to create better material. With this boom in the education industry, it will open the doors for underserved communities to access learning material.

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