Firefly STEM Learning Library

Introducing Firefly, the essential iOS app designed to empower underprivileged kids around the world facing unique learning challenges. With limited internet access, or disabilities like visual, hearing, or speaking impairments, these kids often struggle to access quality STEM education. Did you know that in the US, more than 50 million children face learning obstacles because of being visually or voice or speech impaired? Worldwide, 2.2 billion children lack internet access. Many also lack access to STEM education crucial for fostering critical thinking, problem solving, and technological skills, essential in our modern world. But Firefly changes that, delivering a library of 120+ immersive STEM articles in text and audio form. Students with special needs can listen to articles and pause/play whenever they need. The app's intuitive navigation system is designed to make it easy to explore all topics in the knowledge library, including articles in the Fundamental Sciences, Breakthroughs, Climate and Environment, Plants and Animals, and Earth and Space. But Firefly is more than just a library. It also includes four AI-powered learning tools designed to help underserved students achieve their full potential. The Document Reader helps the visually impaired gain knowledge from external content by reading aloud signs, worksheets, or other documents. The Object Recognizer uses a Vision based ML Model to help visually impaired students identify objects in their home or classroom by dictating their names. The Book Recommender tool uses a custom-trained AI model (created by me) to recommend books to students based on their answers to personalized questions like favorite subject. I trained this model with data gathered from actual underserved students I have taught. The Transcription Service helps hearing/speech-impaired students communicate with those who might not know sign language by converting speech to text. All of these tools utilize state-of-the-art technologies, articles, APIs, and models, while processing and storing information on-device so that the app can work offline, making them accessible to students in the remotest of locations without an internet connection. With a clean interface, Firefly is easy to navigate and supports VoiceOver/Accessibility Tools for students with special needs. Under the hood, Firefly uses Speech Synthesis, Speech Recognition, CreateML, CoreML, Vision, SwiftUI and UIKit elements in the Apple Swift Programming Language. Firefly will be deployed in partnership with Amrita-Seattle to remote regions of India like in Ladakh near the Himalayas and in the Sundarban Rainforest in West Bengal to help small communities of kids who otherwise may not have access to quality STEM education. It's time to empower the next generation of underserved STEM learners with the tools they need to thrive. Firefly is the answer, an app that brings STEM education to everyone.