In response to worldwide school closures, Google has released early access to its latest development, Read Along. Read Along, formerly titled “Bolo,” is an Android app that helps children learn to read by giving verbal and visual feedback as they read stories out loud.
Read Along draws content from a variety of sources of vetted, open education materials, including content from the Global Book Alliance’s flagship initiative, the Global Digital Library.
Read Along is now globally available, with 500+ titles in nine languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. Read Along will continue to expand its collection and add more features, and more languages.
An encouraging helper for beginning readers
Read Along helps kids independently learn and build their reading skills with the help of an in-app reading buddy named Diya. As kids read out loud, Diya uses Google’s text-to-speech and voice recognition technology to detect if a student is struggling or successfully reading the passage. The app gives positive and reinforcing feedback along the way, just as a parent or teacher would. Children can also tap Diya at any time for help pronouncing a word or a sentence.
The app is free to use, and available on any Android device. Parents can create a profile for their children, and can monitor their progress. The initial release of this, originally called “Bolo” and released in India, showed promising results.
For more information see the official announcement from Google.