'Read Along' App Teaches Kids To Read While Stuck Indoors During COVID-19 Lockdown

The COVID-19 surely has messed up the academic schedule for kids. Sure there are some schools that are conducting classes online, most are not able to do so, due to infrastructure issues.

Reuters

Google, however, has come up with a solution to bridge this problem in a rather fun and interactive way. It recently launched a new app for kids in India called Read Along. As the name suggests the main motive of the app is to help the child read and learn better, using interactive elements on the app.

The app was initially launched in India as Bolo, and now it has been launched to the world. It is based completely offline, which makes it perfect for use in remote areas where internet connectivity is not the best.

The app is home to over 50 stories in Hindi, 40 in English sourced from Storyweaver.org.in. The app consists of a reading buddy dubbed ¡®Diya¡¯ who helps the child in reading and explaining a specific world or a phrase.

Diya takes help of voice recognition to understand if the child is pronouncing the words correctly. The app is also smart enough to understand to adjust its reading difficulty for specific children.

The app has gamified the entire process with rewards and badges to help kids feel motivated to do better each time.

Google

The app was initially trailing in across 200 villages in the state of Uttar Pradesh. They¡¯re doing this collaborating with ASER Centre. In their initial rollout, they witnessed that 64 percent of kids who were using its app actually showed noteworthy improvement in reading proficiency in three month¡¯s time.

As per Google, in the pilot stage, 920 kids were asked to use the app and 600 were in a control group without the app. They saw that 39 percent of kids in the group with the app reached a higher level of ASER reading assessment than those without (around 28 percent).

Bolo/ Read Along is available to download only on Google Play Store running on Android Kitkat and higher.