Kick-off co-creation project ‘Babel bear for young, multilingual children’

22 October 2024 News item

Students can feel lost when they don’t speak the same language as their peers and teachers. Better communication improves their well-being. This is why the Babel bear is being developed as a smart and familiar buddy that can help toddlers to communicate with their peers and teacher. This allows young multilingual children to connect with their class better.

Due to various circumstances, the project members of ‘Babel bear for young, multilingual children’ did not meet physically, but online. This didn’t reduce the enthusiasm at the project’s kick-off on the 10^th of October, as the mood quickly become clear: “No questions for now, mainly looking forward to begin!”

Well-being is the most important

Feeling comfortable is an important requirement for being able to learn properly. Everyone agreed on this well before the start of the project, NOLAI’s co-creation manager Annelies Wiggers says: “It’s fun to have been involved with this project since the beginning, and I clearly remember that the question was first posed at a question session with the board of primary education. The director of Stichting Spaarnesant was also present at this session and he proposed the dilemma: ‘Imagine you’re a toddler and you don’t speak the class language. Wouldn’t you feel lost?’ We agreed that a child’s well-being is the most important, and only after that you can continue to learn.”

Babel-beer gepresenteerd tijdens Oratie prof. dr. Inge Molenaar.

The project could finally start this month. Two schools of Stiching Spaarnesant in Haarlem, Utrecht Universty, Hogeschool iPabo, and NOLAI develop a smart teddy bear in this project. “If children don’t speak the language of their environment, they have fewer classmates with which they can form a connection. Only in group 3 are there separate language classes; there is less tailor-made support available for younger children. Therefore, the enthusiasm at the kick-off for this aid was enormous.”

Match

The Babel bear has some history in southern Europe. In an informal conversation, Annelies discovered the story of Charikleia Sparou, junior researcher at the Adaptive Learning Lab and a NOLAI colleague. During her studies, she developed a teddy bear as a means to communicate with children in a refugee camp in Greece. “It was a wonderful match,” Annelies says. “We see the Babel bear as a way to improve interactions by having it translate sentences that students speak into it. It’s a tangible example that shows everyone this can be a real solution to this problem.”

Baseline measurement

Toddlers often experience difficulties in explaining their emotions, and it is even harder to achieve this in another language, Annelies explains. “Researchers start with observing in order to get an overview of how this is currently happening. They will review in what situations language is an obstacle, and which children are affected by it the most. You can view this as a baseline measurement. Next, we will do a trial run with the Babel bear in the classroom. We will observe how the bear deals with background noise, how class dynamics shift, and how teachers use to tool and how they can use it to strengthen their education.”

"Skilled teachers that will play a great role in this co-creation process."

Project leader Rianne van den Berghe, associate lecturer Education & (learning) technology at Hogeschool iPabo, looks back on the kick-off with satisfaction. “I noticed that everyone was eager to get started. On the one hand the teachers were very open and on the other hand they brought in a lot of experience regarding multilingualism. For instance, they already work with visual aids, and they pay attention to safety. There were already some good ideas that guided us to focus on how to stimulate children to speak, or on expanding children’s vocabulary. All in all, skilled teachers that will play a great role in this co-creation process.”