The £240 ($250) Alexa-powered Echo Show 15 device boasts a 15.6-inch display that you can mount to your wall or place on your counter. Users can hang it horizontally or vertically on a wall, like a photo frame, as it displays how-to videos, recipes from the web or shows streamed from Netflix and Spotify. 'We think of it [Echo Show 15] as a kitchen TV, but much, much smarter,' said Miriam Daniel, vice president of Alexa and Echo devices. Echo Show 15 can display a live-stream from your smart doorbell, streaming services interfaces, personalized sticky notes to members of the family and much more. If you've opted to hang it from the wall and want to disable the display, users can ask Alexa to show a photo frame, and Echo Show 15 just shows photos, so it blends into the background. 'Echo Show 15 brings everything that makes your household tick into one place,' said Tom Taylor, senior vice president, Amazon Alexa.

Can A.I. help build better educational apps for kids? That's a question Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind the popular children's TV program "Sesame Street" and others, aims to answer. The company has teamed up with IBM to create the first vocabulary learning app powered by IBM's A.I., which adapts itself the child's current reading level and vocabulary range, then continues to intelligently adjust as the child's vocabulary skills improve. IBM and Sesame Workshop announced last year that the two companies would work together on a line of cognitive apps, games and educational toys. This new app is the first result of that three-year partnership. The companies have now just completed a pilot trial for the app, where it was introduced to over 150 students in Georgia's Gwinnett County Public Schools.

Sesame Workshop and IBM Watson today announced that they are creating a vocabulary app and the Sesame Workshop Intelligent Play and Learning Platform. The new platform will be used by Sesame Workshop and IBM to create a series of cognitive apps, games, and toys to help kids learn. This is the first public action announced by the partnership, which was formed more than a year ago. The platform will run on IBM Cloud and the partners invite the "ecosystem of software developers, researchers, educational toy companies, and educators to tap IBM Watson cognitive capabilities and Sesame Workshop's early childhood expertise to build engaging experiences to help advance children's education and learning," according to a statement from IBM Watson. "When we first started 45 years ago, [our show] was basically using the technology of the day -- that was TV -- to give all kids access to high-quality education," Sesame Workshop COO Steve Youngwood told VentureBeat in a phone interview.

Next-generation cognitive computing is rapidly changing how we live and work. Thousands of brands like 1-800-Flowers and Sesame Street are already using cognitive solutions like IBM Watson to redefine how they improve performance, customer service and revenue. Today's business challenges have never been more complex, and the critical insights that can help address these challenges are often buried in an avalanche of data. With cognitive computing, we are now able to unlock the value in ALL the data -- from internal, external and even publicly available sources -- available to a business. Much of this data was previously inaccessible as it existed in was unstructured (documents, emails, social media posts and images etc.), or was dispersed among any many systems and silos.

If you think Tickle Me Elmo is freaky already, wait until those talking monsters can beat you at Jeopardy!. Sesame Workshop, the educational nonprofit behind Sesame Street and its iconic characters, this week announced a partnership with IBM Watson to develop edtech for pre-school children. Sesame Workshop is no newcomer to tech. The organization previously set up a venture fund in partnership with Collaborative Fund. And they currently offer mobile games, story apps, e-books and digital Family Toolkits to help parents and caregivers navigate challenging topics like autism, incarceration, and more.

The next chapter of early childhood education may be coming courtesy of Sesame Workshop and the letters I-B-M. Sesame Workshop, which has made the beloved children's education show "Sesame Street" for decades, and IBM's Watson -- of "Jeopardy!" The firms will work together for three years to develop products for the classroom and the home, which combine the artificial intelligence prowess of Watson with Sesame Workshop's deep knowledge of how to teach to the preschool set. The hope is that Watson, which can learn and adapt based on its user, will be able to adjust its teaching based on a child's skill level and learning style. Sesame Workshop has worked for years to provide a mix of learning styles in its flagship show, but is looking to do more.

IBM (IBM, Tech30) Watson is teaming up with Sesame Workshop to develop a new suite of preschool products that could range from consumer apps and toys, to educational tools for schools. Sesame Workshop is the nonprofit that creates "Sesame Street." The company says it entered into this partnership because it wants to provide personalized learning to as many kids around the world as possible. "There's not necessarily anything wrong with preschool education today," Harriet Green, IBM's GM for Watson IoT, Commerce and Education told CNNMoney. But not enough kids have access to the right level of education at the right time in their lives.