{"id":21689,"date":"2020-06-16T16:03:15","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T14:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobsfoundation.org\/fellow\/ariel-zekelman\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T14:45:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T13:45:34","slug":"ariel-zekelman","status":"publish","type":"fellow","link":"https:\/\/jacobsfoundation.org\/fellows\/learning-sciences-exchange-fellowship-en\/ariel-zekelman\/","title":{"rendered":"Ariel Zekelman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ariel Zekelman is the creator of <em>Little Genius<\/em>, a line of award-winning educational games for kids aged 3-5 from the pioneering gaming company Osmo. Using her background in industrial design, Zekelman has created tactile-digital products that push the future of screen time, education, and play. Today, Zekelman\u2019s products are used in more than 30,000 schools and one million households around the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zekelman designed her first game, <em>Coding Awbie<\/em>, with co-creator Felix Hu while in college. In 2014, Osmo acquired <em>Coding Awbie <\/em>to bring the first-ever commercially available digital-tangible programming game to market. In 2016, Apple featured <em>Coding Awbie<\/em> in its Apple Store, making Zekelman \u2014 at age 23 \u2014 the youngest female designer to have a product featured there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During her time at Osmo, Zekelman\u2019s games have won several awards including the <em>Parents\u2019 Choice Award<\/em> and the <em>Oppenheim Toy Award<\/em>. An inventor who holds over 10 patents, Zekelman\u2019s work has been presented at the <em>Interaction Design for Children Conference<\/em> (IDC) and the <em>International Conference of the Learning Sciences<\/em> (ICLS). She has been featured on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/videos\/2016-06-04\/the-lego-of-coding-osmo-s-hybrid-approach-to-teaching-code\"><em>Bloomberg West with Emily Chang<\/em><\/a> and in The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/is-your-child-coding-yet-new-building-blocks-teach-programming-basics-1465316688\"><em>Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Zekelman is an alumna of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently resides in Palo Alto with her partner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":21672,"template":"","class_list":["post-21689","fellow","type-fellow","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","fellows_category-learning-sciences-exchange-fellowship-en","fellows_cohort-2020-2022"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Ariel Zekelman - Jacobs Foundation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jacobsfoundation.org\/fellows\/learning-sciences-exchange-fellowship-en\/ariel-zekelman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ariel Zekelman - Jacobs Foundation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ariel Zekelman is the creator of Little Genius, a line of award-winning educational games for kids aged 3-5 from the pioneering gaming company Osmo. 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