SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced that it its providing  kids’ learning robot ‘Atti’ to Talentum Schools operated by Telefonica, the largest telecommunications company in Spain.
 
On September 23, SK Telecom signed a strategic alliance agreement with Telefonica to jointly promote the success of Telefonica’s Talentum Schools through the use of SK Telecom’s Atti, kids’ learning robot, and diverse educational contents.
 
Atti is a friendly-looking robot designed to make learning more interesting for children by utilizing cutting-edge ICT. It has a cradle that allows users to load an Android smartphone with a screen size of 4.6 inches to 5.5 inches. The smartphone functions as the brain of the device, reading and interpreting books out loud for children. The robot has a round body embedded with various sensors and speakers and two short feet with wheels. Atti has been displayed at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2013 held in February in Barcelona and received great attention from visitors and other exhibitors.
 
Atti will be used in two different courses, namely ‘Robotics for Children: Playing with Atti’ and ‘Robotics for Children: Programming Atti using Scratch’ to allow children to experience learning via robots. ‘Robotics for Children: Playing with Atti,’ created for children from four to seven, is designed to make learning interesting via many fun and educational application contents including fairy tales, children rhymes and games. ‘Robotics for Children: Programming Atti using Scratch’, developed for children from eight to twelve, will enable them to experience robot programming through Atti and Scratch, the open source graphic-based programming tool developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
 
These courses using Atti began on September 27, 2013 at Telefonica’s flagship stores in Madrid, and will be expanded to four locations including Barcelona by the year-end.
 
Talentum Schools, created by Telefonica in 2013 as part of the company’s efforts to boost entrepreneurship and technology in Europe, offers diverse educational programs for children and teenagers (ages 4 to 18). In 2011, Telefonica has launched Wayra, a startup support program for talented adults (ages 25 to 75), and has been operating Talentum Startups since 2012 to help university graduates become successful entrepreneurs.
 
“Under the slogan of “Learning by Doing,” Our Talentum School places great emphasis on providing children with a chance to learn digital technology through first-hand experience,” said Javier Santiso, Director of Global Affairs & New Ventures Office at Telefonica. “Through the strategic alliance with SK Telecom and provision of Atti, an innovative smartphone-based learning robot, we expect more children to become interested in many fields of IT including application/web development and robots.”
 
“SK Telecom is delighted to work with Telefonica to offer valuable IT education for children and teenagers using Atti at Talentum Schools,” said Park Chol-soon, Senior Vice President and Head of Convergence Business Office at SK Telecom. “Going forward, SK Telecom expects to create valuable opportunities in the overseas markets with its educational robot platform, while making efforts to build an ecosystem that can boost the development of new and innovative educational contents.”