A life-sized hologram named Mia now greets children inside a New Albany learning village, and she is not there to lecture them. She is there to let them teach her. LifeTown Columbus introduced the AI-powered character, nicknamed Super Buddy, to help kids with special needs practice social and life skills while reinforcing their own sense of accomplishment.
Mia appears as a smiling young girl in a pink jumper with a red blanket tied around her shoulders like a superhero cape, standing inside a tall light-box display roughly life-sized and under five feet tall, according to WOSU Public Media. The character design was intentionally built to feel approachable and heroic to young learners, the station reported. The physical display housing Mia comes from Proto Hologram, a spatial technology company whose 3D hologram hardware also appears in entertainment and medical education.
LifeTown Columbus operates inside a 5,000-square-foot simulated village at New Albany's Lori Schottenstein Chabad Center, according to The Columbus Dispatch. The program, established in 2008, recreates real-world storefronts including a library, medical center, beauty shop and theater, where students with special needs can practice personal, social, independent living and pre-employment skills. Rabbi Areyah Kaltmann, LifeTown Columbus' executive director, says the program now works with 130 schools.
Teaching Mia to Reinforce What They Know
Mia relies on what organizers call mirrored learning, a method in which children teach the AI character rather than simply receiving instruction from it, per the same account. Mia has said that children would teach her what they learned, including making good choices, helping friends and handling difficult situations. The approach flips the usual classroom dynamic: students solidify their own knowledge and self-esteem by explaining it back to the hologram.
That model has empirical backing beyond Columbus. Miami University's Discovery Center for Evaluation, Research, and Professional Learning ran two rounds of pilot studies and found that dialogue-based AI active learning encouraged roughly 71% of participating students to choose additional coursework after finishing their assigned tasks, according to The New Americans Magazine. Whitehall City Schools fifth graders were among the first to pilot the hologram, and Superintendent Sharee Wells told the Toledo Blade that teachers were struck by how students voluntarily kept working past what the lesson required.
DeWine Attends Ribbon-Cutting for Super Buddy
LifeTown held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Super Buddy hologram in Columbus on September 15, with Governor Mike DeWine in attendance, the Dispatch reported. DeWine praised Super Buddy as a positive use of AI that remains controlled by humans with clear boundaries. Kaltmann said Mia runs on a closed system designed to ensure children's safety, and he praised DeWine's support for the project.
WOSU reported that the project honors an Ohio State student who died in 2023 while studying to become a psychologist. Kaltmann said he hoped the ribbon-cutting would represent that every child matters and has something to teach.
Multilingual Reach and Plans to Expand Inclusion
Mia also converses in Spanish, a multilingual capability meant to help adapt lessons for immigrant or non-English-speaking families, The New Americans Magazine reported. LifeTown Columbus operates under Chabad Columbus and Life Town Friendship Circle, according to Cause IQ. Proto's newsletter says roughly 70 students a day work with Mia. LifeTown Columbus also plans to bring general education students from central Ohio public schools into routine sessions with special needs students so they can use the hologram together, according to WBNS 10TV.
