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About the show:

Vision:

A thriving global community of young learners and creators

Mission:

To provide a high-quality, interactive, live show that educates and inspires young learners and creators across the globe

Educational Benefits of the Wimee’s Words show:

• Sparks imagination (and often rhyming!) – Within the first minute of every episode, Wimee invites the viewers to share words that will change the familiar or pattern-based song that he’s singing. We’ve heard from parents how fun it is to continue playing with words in that way with their kids the rest of the day.

• Inspires creative thinking, simple storytelling, and demonstrates basic story structure with the Three Sentence Story segment. Wimee invites viewers to share a word, of which he chooses three: one for the beginning of the story (the first sentence which sets the scene), one for the middle of the story (the second story which presents the problem), and one for the end of the story (the third sentence which solves the problem.)

• Celebrates the diversity of languages and cultures in our daily language segment called Language Explorers. Our translators often share fun and interesting cultural and linguistic information that enhances English speaking viewers’ understanding of the language and cultures where the language is spoken, while also celebrating the language and culture for viewers of that culture or language to take pride in.

• Invites curiosity – Moby is a bird puppet that lives on the KDL Bookmobile. He loves to read and he’s always observing and wondering about things. He shares short, interesting science facts with the viewers every day, inspiring them to wonder, observe, and read.

• Encourages mathematical thinking in our bi-monthly segment, Mathematical Moment. In each segment we highlight one mathematical concept from a picture book and then invite the viewers to figure out and share the answer(s) to that day’s problem(s) or observations.

• Demonstrates technology that invites creativity and composition as opposed to consumption. Tech Talk is a weekly segment that highlights websites where children can learn, explore, and create. Daily, the show demonstrates the app and website, Wimage, that turns words into images during our Wimage Lab segment. (For more information on the educational benefits of the Wimage app and website, click here)

• Builds vocabulary by using the same three words (different every day) during each episode in both written, auditory, and visual form during our Three Sentence Story, Wimage Lab, and Language Explorers segments.

• Promotes diversity and inclusion and the love of reading with the inclusion of book talks. Most of the books have people of color as the main characters. We also have a diverse team of professionals who deliver the content of the show, so viewers can see an array of races and cultures represented in the people who are providing the content and interacting with them.

Educational benefits and uses of the Wimage application:

• Ability to capture creative ideas quickly. Many students struggle with putting their ideas down on paper, whether that’s through writing or drawing. With the Wimage application, students can easily type or speak words and then images of those words instantly appear. They are no longer hindered by things such as poor fine motor skills or lack of perceived drawing ability. Wimage becomes a visual journal of students’ ideas.

• Enhances storytelling ability. Many students are challenged by idea generation in general: they don’t know what to write about. In Wimage they can input seemingly random words and then manipulate them in size, color, orientation, location, etc. This process of physically manipulating the images sparks creative story ideas. New ideas unfold as the images are changed and moved and as new images are added. Playing with their ideas in such an easy and fun way and creating a visual story first causes the transition of students to writing their story to be much less challenging and much more motivating.

• For vocabulary building and language comprehension. Oftentimes there are communication barriers between teachers and English Language Learner (ELL) students. Images are a universal language and therefore the Wimage application can be used to increase understanding of words and decrease frustration, thereby aiding the learning process for students who struggle with comprehension (this includes young children as well).

• Teaching visual literacy. Visual literacy is the ability to both comprehend and create images, and is an essential 21st century skill. This means that teachers need to find ways to cultivate this skill in their students. The Wimage application allows students of various ages and abilities to create visual content in a way that is easy to understand and do.

• The application is especially ideal for students who have visual-spatial intelligence and for those who are visual and/or kinesthetic learners since the basis of the innovative technology is that it turns words into images, and it’s very hands-on.

• Kids can create their own books using the Wimage app, becoming authors and illustrators.