Gwinnett County kindergarten students learn words with the help of Sesame Street & IBM

A child plays on a tablet as the Sesame Street character Grover watches. The Sesame Workshop and IBM have partnered to create an app that will improve the vocabulary of kindergarten students nationwide. The companies recently tested the app with about 150 Gwinnett County students. PHOTO CONTRIBUTED.

A child plays on a tablet as the Sesame Street character Grover watches. The Sesame Workshop and IBM have partnered to create an app that will improve the vocabulary of kindergarten students nationwide. The companies recently tested the app with about 150 Gwinnett County students. PHOTO CONTRIBUTED.

IBM and the Sesame Network believe they have created the industry’s first vocabulary learning app for kindergarten students, and credit some Gwinnett County pupils for assisting in its development.

The companies distributed a news release early Tuesday announcing a recent pilot program conducted in Gwinnett that studied how 150 students learned words like “amplify,” “camouflage,” and “applause” through the tablet-based app over a two-week period. The app featured Sesame Street characters alongside IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence learning technology, educational videos and word games.

“When we found a spider in the classroom, a student yelled, 'an arachnid,’ " one teacher said.

Gwinnett, Georgia’s largest school district, is the only school district that was part of the pilot program. Gwinnett has a long-term partnership with IBM to provide analytics and learning tools for the school district.

The app is still in development, officials said. The app and others like it will soon be available on the IBM Cloud for wide adoption in schools globally, the news release said.