KaDa Story is Leading the Digital Revolution in Children’s Content

BEIJING, Dec. 29, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — Under the direct guidance of China’s Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) and the Ministry of Education, the 2018 Global Education Summit (GES) took place December 3-5, 2018 in Beijing, China. It was co-sponsored by the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF), Beijing Normal University, TencentArizona State University (ASU).

Sally Xie, founder and CEO of KaDa Story, was invited to attend the summit as the representative of China’s leading enterprise of digital content for children. She delivered a keynote speech on The Application of Big Data in Children’s Early Reading, and discussed the digital revolution of children’s content industry together with global education experts.

A data engine is driving further refinements to children’s content industry.

With the increasing attention on children’s spiritual and cultural consumption, the children’s content industry is at an inflection point. According to KaDa Story’s 2018 big data analysis report, the number of users on KaDa Story has exceeded 10 million, and the platform is rapidly penetrating from first and second tier cities to third and fourth tier cities. The number of users in third and fourth tier cities in 2018 is over twice that of 2016.

With the increasing of users’ acceptance of children’s digital content and their willingness to pay for it, the industrial competition for children’s content has become fairly intense. The first half of the race in children’s content industry is over, and a digital revolution driven by big data is now promoting the operational transformation from being extensive to being refined. As China’s leading platform of children’s content, KaDa Story was the first to apply big data on reading to its platform content operation and function development.

After being released on KaDa Story, the open rate, completion rate and repetition rate of all picture books will be recorded to reflect the extent to which they are followed and liked by users. Only high-quality content favored by users will be retained after multiple rounds of data analysis and comparison.

KaDa Story then matches content information with user information according to a personalized recommendation algorithm. It recommends accurate and specific content to children based on their interests and usage tendencies, which allows every child’s personality to be highlighted and their needs to be respected.

Lastly, to ensure that the content quality and user experiences continue to improve, KaDa Story selects its content in a Darwinian way. That is, only the best content passes the selection by people and or engines is retained.

KaDa Story is reconstructing all of the important links in the children’s early reading industry by applying big data to content selection and recommendations, as well as platform optimization. The superiority of this new reading model is that it makes personalized reading for users possible with big data. By providing timely and comprehensive data analysis reports, it helps users to understand and improve their own reading. This helps lead them to intelligent reading.

Returning to the nature of education is the ultimate meaning of “technology + education”.

The development of technology promotes the upgrading of children’s content consumption. This, however, deserves a discussion on how to maintain the original nature of children’s reading amidst the waves of the digital revolution.

It is known that behind the reading data of KaDa Story is a scientific content selection system built on the underlying logic of children’s early education, covering the five fields of self-growth, social cognition, language and culture, scientific exploration and artistic enlightenment, which include 20 sub-fields. Before data is released on the platform, every picture book must go through multiple rounds of selection by teaching, research research teams and preschool education experts. They will take into consideration the content of the book is it educational, interesting, artistic and literary.

In addition, a double-engine content recommendation mechanism is applied to KaDa Story’s platform. A recommendation is first made according to the underlying logic of education, and then a second calculation is made according to the interests of children, preferences and usage habits. This mechanism allows every child to have personalized reading experience, a wide range of reading materials, and eventually to have all-round development.

As for one of the key topics of 2018 GES “Education & Science and Technology”, Sally XIE said, “The ultimate meaning of big data for education is returning to the nature of education. In other words, it is how to better develop children’s abilities in cognition, cooperation, innovation and global competition so as to adapt to the future society and develop in a comprehensive way. Just like the theme of this Summit ‘Integration & Innovation’, every child should be lit up by education.”