Over the past three years, more than 30 million kids have read more than 120 million stories on Read Along. The app, which was first released as Bolo in India in 2019 and released globally as Read Along the following year, helps kids learn to read independently with the help of a reading assistant, Diya.
As kids read stories aloud, Diya listens and gives both correctional and encouraging feedback to help kids develop their reading skills. Read Along has been an Android app so far, and to make it accessible to more users, we have launched the public beta of the website version. The website contains the same magic: Diya’s help and hundreds of well illustrated stories across several languages.
With the web version, parents can let their children use Read Along on bigger screens by simply logging into a browser from laptops or PCs at readalong.google.com. Just like the Android app, all the speech recognition happens in the browser so children’s voice data remains private and we do not send it to any servers. You can learn more about data processing on the website version by reading our privacy policy.
The website also opens up new opportunities for teachers and education leaders around the world, who can use Read Along as a reading practice tool for students in schools. The product supports multiple popular browsers like Chrome, Firefox and Edge, with support for iOS and more browsers such as Safari coming soon. With the sign-in option, you can login from a unique account for each child on the same device. We recommend using Google Workspace for Education accounts in schools and Google accounts with Family Link at home.
In addition to the website launch, we are also adding some brand-new stories. We have partnered with two well-known YouTube content creators, ChuChu TV and USP Studios, to adapt some of their popular videos into a storybook format. Our partnership with Kutuki continues as we adapt their excellent collection of English and Hindi alphabet books and phonics books for early readers; those titles will be available later this year.
Reading is a critical skill to develop at a young age, and with Read Along Web, we are taking another step towards ensuring each kid has that option. Join us by visiting readalong.google.com and help kids learn to read with the power of their voice.
Article by Tasnim Khan. Read full article here.
