Mini Scholars Research
This site holds the evidence behind each Mini Scholars product. It exists so that a parent, a teacher, a state buyer, or an investor can read the same document our team reads, follow every citation to its source, and see plainly where the research supports a claim and where it does not yet.
How to read a brief
Every brief has the same shape:
- What the product is, in a paragraph and a table.
- The mechanism the research supports. Named studies, with the specific numbers pulled from the abstracts, not paraphrased from memory.
- Why the design choices follow. Screen-free, on-device, one-way data, and so on.
- Where the evidence stops. Every brief has this section. It is not a disclaimer; it is the most useful part for anyone doing diligence.
- Sources. Every citation was resolved to its real title before it was written down. See How we cite.
The products
| Brief | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Talking Book | A picture book that answers a child's spoken question, on the chip in the cover |
| Companion | A plush that runs rhyming and counting games on-device |
| Sensory Rooms | One room that calms down or engages up |
| Learning & Family Apps | Three apps on one record, no scores for the child |
| Facility OS | Attendance, ratio, subsidy and licensing as by-products of signed events |
The foundations
- Learning frameworks: Scarborough's Rope, the phonological-awareness ladder, Clements & Sarama, Gelman & Gallistel, Vygotsky.
- Privacy by design: what happens to your child's voice, written for parents.
- How the data path works: the same thing for engineers and reviewers.
- Legal frame: COPPA, student records, biometrics, and the wall between reporting and model work.
What this site is not
It is not a sales page and it does not describe a running facility. Products are described at their current development state. Where a page says "in development," it means that.