Having graduated with a B.A. in Product Design and designing an educational children’s book for her final year project, Anna followed her passion for education and travelled to Hanoi, Vietnam to teach English as a foreign language to young children.
While teaching she was inspired by a successful lesson she designed for her students one day. Instead of learning through books they decided to make an interactive fun game to learn the words of animals. Combining her skills from Product Design in college and teaching, Anna could see that children learned way better through play!
Driving home from her lesson on her moped she had a bright idea. Anna always wanted to start her own business but she was starting to find a problem that needed solving. Many children struggle with pronunciation when learning a new language. Teachers and parents find it hard to track their student or Childs progress. They may not have fluent English themselves. When Anna was growing up she felt like the educational system was a one way system built for one type of intelligence. It’s a strong belief of Anna’s that we learn by doing.
When she got home to Ireland she launched her first two augmented reality educational apps in the areas of safety for young learners in an effort to save young children’s lives. In 2019 Anna won a National Startup Award for her safety children’s book. She could see the benefits augmented reality and play had on educational experiences. Andrew, a Product Design student in Maynooth University was helping Anna along the way with her startup. He started to become a strong member of the team after graduating with a project developing a speech recognition toy for early learners.
Anna stayed behind after her classes in an English Language School in Dublin brainstorming ideas for an English learning tool that used augmented reality. That’s when she hit on the idea of combining augmented reality with speech recognition software. Shortly after, Anna was introduced to Areti, who magically slotted into the role of Product Owner with her vast experience in curriculum design and English Language Learning. The idea kept growing until Bassel approached the team. With his eagerness to get involved in an exciting educational software product with his experience as a Math Tutor and strongly skilled app developer.
Our jigsaw wasn’t complete until we found Joshua, a brightly talented animator who excitedly joined the team bringing his animation and design skills to the table. Tom, a good friend of Anna’s who had provided her with advice all the way through from his own startup and software experience took on the role of website development and sound engineering for the voice overs in the app.
And here we all are!
Little Red Edu enables early learners to learn and speak English through a gamified curriculum that uses immersive technology. Little Red Edu uses speech recognition technology. Guiding the child from their first beginner lesson to their first English sentence.
The ability to process speech sounds, understand and interact with other children are fundamental building blocks for a child’s development. With Covid-19, children had lost out on over 6 months of school education. Little Red Edu are on a mission to help children reach their full potential. Try our exciting and fun learning app, ‘Listen and Speak with Little Red’.
The Team
Anna Carmody
CEO and Founder holds a B.A. in Product Design at The National College of Art and Design. Having taught English as a foreign language in Vietnam, combined her product design skills into education for early learners. She successfully brought two augmented reality products to market, winning a National Startup Award in 2019. She launched a fire safety augmented reality app soon after. This is within the secondary school curriculum in Ireland along with 30 pilot schools in the EU.
Tom Wilde
Internet Ninja
Our Mission
Our long term aim is to help children around the world reach their full potential through play.
By using new cutting-edge technology we can track a child’s progress, adapt the learning experience to suit each individual child’s needs and provide learning outcomes through trialled and tested games designed by educational experts and product designers