"The future of reading is personal!
It is a human experience with boundless opportunities
for exploration, that you define for its enjoyment...."
Prior to the pandemic, inspired by the reading challenges people faced despite the worldwide public and private K12 educational school systems, higher education institutions, profit and nonprofit businesses or organizations who offer support services, libraries, bookstores, and an abundance of software programs on the market to teach and or reinforce it, the challenges continued. For example, minority communities have long known that 3rd grade reading scores were used as a predictor of future crimes and subsequently prisons needed. It is a pivotal period in education as students transition from "learning to read, to reading to learn." The Schott Foundation is one of many organizations that have led efforts to oversee, evaluate, and report on the reading and educational challenges as well as causation. Through the years, they have collaborated with public, private, and governmental entities to address them.
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"The more that you read, the more things you will know,
the more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
~Dr Seuss
Simply put, “learning starts with reading” as it is the foundation for other learning activities. The point of reading is comprehension, and the point of comprehension is learning. Therefore, “Reading is the fundamental learning skill” that is critically necessary to acquire for self-guided, life-long learning. According to various sources, a nation's economic prosperity is directly correlated to the learning of its children. A 10% increase in literacy translates to a 0.3% annual growth rate for that country. As a result, countries have aligned their health, welfare, and future economies with the literacy and education of its citizens. Many have invested billions in the past, and have pledged billions in the future to support global initiatives sponsored by the United Nations (and others) for improvement!​
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Since COVID-19 subsided, the 2022 National Assessment on Educational Progress in the United States reported that elementary and middle school reading scores had dropped to its lowest levels in three decades. During this timeframe students were learning from home, and most parents worked from home without the distracted lifestyle stresses of travel to and from work, school, activites, and other events. Parents had more time to spend with their children and families, although for many the availability of technology was a challenge in distant learning amongst other issues. Nevertheless, during this same period, the use of social media and other technologies sharply increased.
This year (2024) a panel at The World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, lead by a CNBC moderator, discussed "The Future of Jobs." The CNBC team issued a global summary of the future jobs report in which they emphasized the importance of "life long learning." We were right by designing eduStats Data Analytics as an approach to using data to examine performance, aligning it with education (Common Core Standards) to equip education professionals, parents, and families with the information they need to make good education decisions, identify aggregates to develop specialized instruction, offer students opportunities for continued individual educational progress (outside of talented and gifted programs), and most importantly use this data to support life-long learning. Overtime, individuals will have a personal portfolio that can provide insight of past challenges, i.e., standard/concepts, grade, results, etc, to address or prepare for future educational and or career ambitions if they choose. For example, challenges in math in high school may have derived from learning concepts in elementary school. ​​
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With Kusoma, we endeavor to address the reading problem (or at least impact it) with a creative solution from a different perspective to influence personal reading as a lifelong experience verses an educational mandate. We believe that it is a lifelong journey that everyone can enjoy. And, that it is a personal dynamic experience that originates with the reader and evolves with them. With the pervasive influence of social media and other platforms, rather than censor the technology, our goal is to use these powerful tools and framework to inspire, transform, and reinforce reading! As it becomes a "digital livestyle norm", comprehension, confidence, and what they read will evolve. ​​​​
The rules for reading?
Their are no rules!
Just Read...
"We are creating a social movement to support personal reading for the digital age!"
Breaking down these barriers, we endeavor to rebrand reading as a human experience, that is only distinquished by language. Then, reintroduce it as a "personal" lifestyle with boundless opportunities for genre exploration, void of conditions. This US Army female veteran-owned venture leverages technology and social media to offer users a lifetime of reading enjoyment through our interactive reading platform, Kusoma! Through it, we offer a wide range of services to equip readers with the tools "they desire" to build their "personal" ideal reading experience! In doing so, similar to social media and other tech platforms, it is our hope that it will increase reading albeit hardcover, paperback, or audio book sales and or subscriptions, as well as ereaders and other electronic reading and support devices. We are creating a personal reading movement to support lifelong learning!
We believe the future of reading is:
