Drum and write. At the same time.

What Is Drumball?

DrumBall (patent pending) is an embodied learning environment designed to allow drum patterns to be turned into and used as letters, words and phrases. Children as young as 3 have used it to practice a wide range of key literacy skills, from letter naming to word spelling.

Read Play Explore

The Drumball meets the need for a new kind of embodied learning, one that leverages the communicative and health benefits of drumming. Developed by researchers spanning music, education and design, it enables people of all ages with a wide range of disabilities to use accessible, expressive drum patterns for multimodal verbal communication. The Alphariddims code is easy to learn. We designed it to foster early literacy learning via rhythmic communication by offering a tight match between the way early learners use speech and gesture to produce meaning and how they can express those ideas through rhythm. And our online platform supports children in their development through four levels (sounds, letters, words and phrases) as they learn to read, compose and listen to drum texts.

See how it works?

Research

The purpose of the Drumball study is to understand the implications of rhythmic communication technologies as learning tools for early literacy that provide multimodal feedback that children can manipulate through hand-drumming (letters, words, phrases). We want to gain useful feedback on whether children can learn a digital drum language grammar and what the teaching and learning applications would look like.

Read more about the research

Workshop

The Urban Griot family workshop is a STEAM playground for early literacy facilitated through an embodied mode of learning that blends voice, rhythm and movement with computer media interaction. Children use the Drumball technology and Alphariddims code to learn the alphabet, explore new vocabulary words and create their own stage performances.

RSVP here to reserve your spot(s) (limited space per session).
Complete the online Child Inventory Skills Questionnaire.
Print, sign and return parent consent form (drop-off in person).
Schedule a phone interview date and time by filling out this doodle.

Drumball for Schools

Enrich your classroom lessons or after-school play with the world's first digital talking drum.

To bring DrumBall to your school or enrichment program:
Contact info@urbangriot.org