Zach Silverzweig

Activity	Projects	Revenue	Pledges	Avg. Pledge	Links
2020 - 2020	1	$5,266 USD	124	$42 USD
	My current project began about two years ago, when I first began researching how to teach kids to read. It didn't make sense to me. There was a lot of literature that talked about the importance of "phonics", but when I looked at the words on any page anywhere, phonics didn't really seem to apply. And then I had that infomercial moment: "there has to be a better way." So I started coding. I made an algorithm, the BabbleShark, which could help me better understand exactly how English works. What letters make which sounds? How often? Can we optimize that? After a few months of iteration, I had created something that could "parse" about 95% of the dictionary and that gave me a unique insight into the workings of our language. To my knowledge, no one before had ever done this exact work. And from my perspective, no work done before is as profound in what it could mean for the future of how we teach young kids to read. This is my second KS project. The first was the board game my wife and I made: Empires at Sea. I still have EAS 2nd Edition on the docket for a Kickstarter (maybe this summer?) and the Empires at Sea: Tactics game to explore the in's and out's of ship-to-ship combat. Big thanks to PandaGM for being so patient with me while I meander my way across projects as the years go by. My current work has me thrilled every morning when I wake up. We have the potential to close a serious gap in literacy in the US. If everything else stays the same, but reading was just easier, the world will change. It's simple math.