“Speaking their language,” says Educate Aug Founder/Company Director Tim Limon.

He’s explaining his approach to empowering students through creativity and XR.

Tim, who is both a media professional and an education professional, works with U.K. students on improving their reading and phonics skills. His Manchester-based educational technology company boosts student literacy skills through interactive work in augmented reality, extended reality and AI.

Inside the journey

Tim starts with the students’ interests–then gets them involved in creating social-media content, based on the music, movies and other areas that spark their imagination.

And as the students create their content, they’re incorporating phonics and reading–along with a considerable amount of fun and imagination.

Along the way, Tim makes sure that his young creators, who often have low self-esteem due to having fallen behind their peers in their classwork, get a new perspective on themselves and their skills.

“I just want to help children realize…that they are assets,” he says.

While Educate Aug is a relatively new company, one of Tim’s products–the Augmented Reality Phonics Soundboard–has already earned a Finalist spot in the Innovate UK Immersive Tech Awards.

Additional creations include a holographic testimonial, as well as a Cosmic Canvas, which you can see on Instagram.

Tim shared the story of Educate Aug, explained how his AR Phonics Soundboard works and talked about his creative journey.

On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:

• How storytelling and content creation first sparked Tim’s imagination in his creative journey;

• The story of Educate Aug, and how he came to create it;

• How his work at a children’s camp in the U.S. helped him discover his talent for educational innovation;

• His experience training as a teacher in the U.K., after returning from two years’ teaching experience in South Korea;

• His work in his first U.K. position after completing teacher training;

• How he came to create his Augmented Reality Phonics Soundboard;

• His approach to working with students for whom reading is a challenge;

• How the Augmented Reality Phonics Soundboard works;

• What’s next!;

• How to support his work;

• The genesis of the Cosmic board;

• Some of Tim’s favorite AR and AI resources.